LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMEltiCA. 



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ASSO(;iATED DAIRIING: 



CREAMERIES 



CREAMERY BUTTER 



CHEESE AND CHEESE-MAKING, 



.<-r> r) DAIRY HOUSES AND THE REST BUTTER 



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LANCASTER, PA. 

S. H. ZAHM & CO., 
1879. 



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Copyriglit, 1S79, 
S. H. ZAHM & CO. 



STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

THE INQITIRER P. & P. CO., 

LANCASTER, PA. 



PREFACE 



IF any among those who make and sell, or buy and eat, 
the golden products of the dairy, may think it worth their 
while to look into these pages, they are reminded that the 
aim, as the title indicates, is to present these leading fea- 
tures : the making of butter at creameries, the production 
of cheese by the factory system, and the labor-saving methods 
" now within the reach of every dairyman and dairywoman 
in the land. Many of those who make our butter and cheese, 
though they have not themselves departed from the earlier 
ways, are yet well aware of the changing processes of these 
later years, and of the wonderful results brought about by the 
system of associated effort on the part of dairymen elsewhere; 
to others it is all familiar as an oft-told tale; for years they 
have helped through the whole of it, they have tested every 
plan which has promised to benefit them, have sifted what 
was of value and settled on that best suited to their wants. 
Again, there are those who are conscious of the change mainly 
as they feel it in the lessened prices they are receiving for 
their products. If any among them all shall find anything 
which will be of use in producing a better article at less cost 
of time and labor, or having already reached the highest re- 
sults, if it will show them how they can aid their neighbors 
without loss to themselves, the charge of uselessness, at least, 
cannot be brought against our little work. 

The dealer in these articles, from the position he occu- 
pies in relation to the other two interested classes, has often 

(iii) 



IV PREFACE. 

opportunities for acquiring information not possessed by them ; 
but even he, perhaps, may find an idea here and there which 
will suggest how the interests of all concerned may be ad- 
vanced. 

While it is sometimes true that the less we know about the 
production of that which we eat the better it will be relished, 
there will be found here, in the plain descriptions of the mod- 
ern mode of manufacturing, nothing, it is hoped, that may 
tend to dull any one's appetite for these standard articles, 
which are, when properly made, at once toothsome luxuries 
and substantial additions to the bill of fare. 

Acknowledging our obligations to those who have kindly 
given descriptions of their processes and apparatus, and to 
the authors from whom we have quoted, it may not be 
amiss to add, that those who wish to know more about the 
subjects treated, will find much in regard to almost every- 
thing connected with dairying, from the pens of its leading 
exponents, in the voluminous reports of the Dairy Associa- 
tions of the various States where the industry is prominent, 
and especially in those of the American Dairymen's Associa- 
tion, from its organization to the present time. 

April, 1879. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

I. INTRODUCTORY, ^ 

Origin and Growth, ........ 9 

II. FOR AND AGAINST, i6 

How TC Start, ......... 23 

III. CREAMERS AND OTHER APPARATUS, 27 

IV. METHODS OF CONDUCTING CREAMERIES AND MAKING 
CREAMERY BUTTER, 36 

V. CHEESE AND CHEESE MAKING, .52 

VI. OUR DAIRY HOUSES, 63 

The Best Butter, . . . . . . . ,69 

Conclusion, ......... 73 

(V) 



ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 



I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

DO you ask, ''What is a creamery?" Let me tell you 
here — or better, come with me and see. We will look at 
the surroundings first. Here are farms on all sides, and every 
one has its herd of cows. The cow is the basis of the cream- 
ery, and there are three hundred or more on the farms within 
two miles ; that one there has ten, the next one four ; on that 
large one yonder there are fifty. This one on the other side 
of the road has twenty-eight' — six Jerseys, five Holstein, and 
the rest we call natives, but they are none the worse for that. 
We are almost there now ; it is that plain looking building, 
out of which the spring seems to come. This man with the 
milk cans on his wagon is going there too. 

**What large cans they are !" Yes, those of the city milk 
dealer would look small beside them. But here it is, we 
will go inside. There is not much to be seen ; four huge 
pans — three of them are full of milk, and the cans we saw 
on the wagon just now are being emptied into the fourth. 
One of these pans is filled every time the cows are milked ; 
that one at the end has yesterday morning's milk; the 
cream is thick on the top of it. The next one was 
filled yesterday evening, this one this morning, and the 
last one now. Each one holds fifteen hundred quarts of 
milk, over three thousand pounds. Besides those pipes full 

(7) 



8 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

of spring water and this delightfully cool air, there is not 
much in this room, and we will go to the next. 

The water in the pool here is cold, and those deep round 
cans in it are full of cream ; there is a churn and a butter 
worker, and these boxes and tubs are full of butter, and there 
is more in the cellar below. In that room at the end they 
make cheese. Now we can go. 

'•' But you have not told us what a creamery is. We will 
get our Webster and look for a definition." 

You will not find it there. It is one of the new words 
awaiting its turn to go into the next revised edition. It 
was not common enough fifteen years ago to come under the 
eye of the lexicographer. To-day it is to be found in every 
agricultural journal, and in almost every country newspaper 
that has market reports. But to many persons it conveys 
rather an uncertain meaning. They see that creamers and 
creameries are being discussed, and that creamery butter sells 
for more than any other. If they ask the butter dealer what 
it is, he will answer, "The best butter that I sell." If they 
ask the maker of fancy dairy butter from June grass and white 
clover hay, he says, ''It is the butter that is hurting my 
business, but it is not as good as mine." 

It may strike the patrons of some of the older of these in 
stitutions as odd, that any one should not know anything 
about what, to them is as familiar as the houses in which they 
live. There are, however, a good many people who do not. 
To these we would say, A creamery is an establishment where 
the milk from a neighborhood is collected, and butter and 
rheese made from it. 

At fi^-st the name was only applied where both butter and 
cheese were made. When butter alone was made it was a 
butter factory; when cheese alone, a cheese factory. But 



ORIGIN AND GROWTH. 9 

latterly, it is given when only butter is made from the 
milk gathered in from the farms around. The milk depots 
where milk is collected and shipped to the city markets bear 
the appellation — sometimes, and of late all the new fix- 
tures for setting milk for cream are called creamers, and it 
naturally follows that the place where they are brought to- 
gether and used will be a creamery. ^' Old Creamer" was a 
pet name for one of the best cows the country ever held, and 
cream, the root of them all, does not every one of us know 
what that is? 

Creameries are part of a system which has revolutionized 
dairying in many sections of our country within the last quar- 
ter of a century, and the origin, history and bearings of 
which are well worth all the attention we can give them in 
these pages. 

ORIGIN AND GROWTH. 

At first glance it may seem strange that all of the five thou- 
sand creameries, butter factories and cheese factories in the 
United States, with the exception of scarcely two hundred, are 
north of latitude forty-one, and between the Hudson and the 
Missouri, while of the eleven million cows which the country 
probably now contains, fully seven million chew the cud and 
give milk outside of these limits. These could supply miik 
enough to run thirty thousand establishments, with over two 
hundred cows to each. It is easy to see why there are none 
in those sections where only a single cow or half-a-dozen are 
kept on a place, mainly for the milk and butter they furnish 
for home use, where the houses are far apart and the roads 
often not good; but it is not so easy to understand why there 
are as yet none in others where cows are plenty and the farms 
small. In New York, which has more creameries and factor- 
ies than any other State, the dairymen who support them 
I* 



rO ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

keep on an average but thirteen cows. This is less than the 
average in many other localities, and the wonder is that in 
these some plan of handling the milk, or at least the cream, 
at one point under the eye of one skilled person, has not long 
ago been devised, and thus a uniformity and improved quality 
of product secured that will hardly be attained so long as the 
work must be done by many hands overburdened by the num- 
berless tasks that come to the workers on a farm. When the 
idea first suggested itself to those who would be most inter- 
ested and benefited by it, it is hard to guess, but it must have 
occurred to more than one farmer and farmer's wife and 
dairymaid long before the first factory was built. 

The peasants of Switzerland and some other parts of 
Europe have for a long time not only driven their cows and 
goats and sheep together and pastured them through the sum- 
mer under the care of one of their number, but they have had 
the milk made into cheese in common and divided among the 
owners in proportion to the number of animals each one had 
in the common herd or flock. With them it was a necessity; 
poor and possessed of but a few cows, they could not individ- 
ually make cheese of the kind for which their wealthier neigh- 
bors were finding a profitable sale; but by uniting they were 
able to make the same kind and find a market, which each 
could not have done alone, for it must be remembered that 
the poor man's single cow or scanty flock will not give milk 
enough in a day to make a Swiss cheese. 

In this country, Mr. A. Picket, of Jefl"erson county, Wis- 
consin, seems to have been one of the first to carry into prac- 
tice the idea of co-operation in cheese-making. From a 
paper read before the Wisconsin Dairyman's Association, by 
Mr. J. G. Picket, we extract the following account of this 
early effort : 



ORIGIN AND GROWTH. II 

"The pioneer settlers of Wisconsin had arrived at that 
point of refinement when they longed for cheese. My father 
saw the opportunity, and so in the spring of 1841 set about 
supplying the demand. He had driven from Ohio ten cows, 
but he was satisfied that with that number he could not sup- 
ply the demand. There were no cows to be bought, and had 
there been any for sale there was no money to pay for them. 
The idea suggested itself to my mother, Why not co-operate 
with our neighbors in cheese-making? It was a capital and 
original idea, and was at once adopted by the head of the 
family. 

'' The plans all being completed, on the first day of June, 
1 841, my mother, with myself as assistant, made from the 
milk of thirty cows, owned by six patrons, the first cheese, I 
verily believe, made under the co-operative system in Wis- 
consin. 

"All the cattle belonging to a settlement in those days 
grazed together in one herd, and at night the cows were all 
driven to my father's yard and milked by their respective 
owners, and the milk was weighed in pails by the old-fash- 
ioned steel-yards. 

" The little kitchen factory was operated on precisely the 
same principles as are the mammoth cheese factories having 
the patronage of a thousand cows at the present day; though 
the implements were rude and to a modern cheese-maker 
would seem wonderful. The patrons drew their respective 
shares in cheese, instead of cash, and were happy. 

" The experiment proved so satisfactory that in the follow- 
ing year, 1842, five more cows were added by the arrival of 
two new families, and the cheese became known from Madi- 
son to Milwaukee." 

This county had in 1877 forty-two cheese factories and 



12 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

creameries, which turned out butter and cheese by hun 
dreds of tons. But the one started thirty-eight years ago, 
long before any of these, owed its existence to the quick wit 
of a woman ; one, too, who did not shrink from the added 
duties which it brought upon her. At present a few of the 
best cheese factories in the country are managed by women. 

In 1844, Lewis M. Norton built a cheese factory in Goshen, 
Conn. Here the milk was coagulated on the farms, and the 
curds brought to the factory to be made into cheese. This 
plan was afterwards tried in Ohio, but it was found that the 
condition in which the curds from the different farms were 
brought in varied so much that it was often impossible to 
make good cheese. 

There were doubtless other trials made in various parts of the 
country, but to Jesse Williams, of Rome, Oneida county, 
New York, is generally accorded the honor of originating the 
system of associated dairying, which bears the distinctive title 
of "American." The locality in which he lived was devoted 
more to cheese-making than to butter, and like the others 
already named, his efforts were exerted in the direction of 
cheese. 

The story of what he did is as simple as it is interesting. 
Being an expert cheese -maker and able to produce a prime 
article, he was enabled to contract the product of his dairy for 
a whole year in advance. In the spring of 1851, one of his sons 
being about to commence farming on his own account, the 
father included both his own and the son's cheese in the con- 
tract for that year. The young man had, however, never 
paid special attention to the making of cheese while at home, 
and had doubts as to his ability to produce an article that 
would prove acceptable to the contracting parties. In the 
discussions that followed as to what had best be done under 



ORIGIN AND GROWTH. 



^3 



the circumstances, it was finally suggested that the milk should 
all be taken to the father's dairy- house and the cheese made 
under his supervision. The idea once acted on and success- 
fully carried out, the plan would easily extend itself until it 
included the farm dairies of a whole neighborhood. 

From the circumstances connected with this early begin- 
ning, it has more than once been said that this system was acci- 
dental, like others that have brought about great changes in 
meihods of labor and the conditions of society resulting there- 
from. Whatever view of its origin we may take, it affords a 
striking example of the general tendency of the age to re- 
move the manufacture of most articles of universal use from the 
hands of the isolated individual and concentrate it in work- 
shops, where one man can do the work of ten — the spirit of 
the age touching one of the most important branches of human 
industry. 

Though a beginning had now been made, the new system 
did not at once assume great proportions. From the statistics 
accessible it appears that not until three years later, in 1854, 
was the next factory built. In that year four were started, 
the year following two more, and the number slowly increased 
until the first years of the war ; then they suddenly sprang up 
all over the northern dairy districts. In 1864 there were over 
four hundred in operation in New York, the single county of 
Oneida having eighty, and they had extended East and West. 
Last year there were eleven hundred and forty reported in 
the State. 

Butter factories came in somewhat later than cheese factor- 
ies. There was one reason for making cheese on the associ- 
ated plan that did not apply to butter. The last could be 
made by the owner of even a single cow, because the cream 
could be kept until there was enough to churn into butter; 



14 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

but the cheese that was wanted must be made from sweet milk, 
and of this the owner of a few cows only (like the Swiss peas- 
ant) could not command enough in a day to make a cheese, 
and he was practically debarred from the business when work- 
ing alone. 

No other State has as many as New York. Maine has had 
some sixty cheese factories, but for some reason they have 
hardly met the expectations of their projectors. Vermont 
has a number of creameries. In Northern Pennsylvania there 
are about a hundred cheese factories, and their motto "full 
cream " calls for the best that can be made. In several of 
the counties on the southern border, creameries as well as 
cheese factories are scattered at wide intervals. 

In the dairy districts of Ohio they followed soon after the 
great strides made in New York, and the largest butter-makers 
in the world now conduct their operations in one of the 
northern counties of that State. Cheese also is made in im- 
mense quantities and in every variation of form and quality. 
The Pentagon buildings of Straight and Son at Hudson are 
probably the finest cheese-curing houses to be found anywhere. 

In Illinois the first cheese factory was built in 1867, and 
the first creamery in 1868, the latter was one of those which 
have since made western creamery butter famous all over the 
country, and helped so much in developing the dairy interests 
of the West. 

In Iowa the first creamery was started in 1872, and there 
are now about one hundred built and in course of construe • 
tion. A very fine one is located at Muscatine. The butter 
of Iowa has received the highest awards at two great exhibi- 
tions, one at the dairy exhibit at the Centennial, when John 
Stewart, of Anamosa,* stood first, and the other at the 
late International dairy fair at New York, where the premium 

* Then of Manchester. 



ORIGIN AND GROWTH. 1 5 

for the best butter made anywhere went to H. D. Sherman and 
Co., of Monticello. The system has gained a strong foot- 
hold here, and the State will in years to come furnish the 
world with a large share of its butter and clieese. 

In some other States besides these, a beginning has been 
made. The system has found favor in Canada, and some of 
the .finest dairy products of the present time find their way 
into the markets of the world from here. 

In England it has attracted much attention, and no wonder; 
in certain lines of cheese the American has crowded their own 
almost out of the market ; as a late English paper has it, *' Let 
dairy farmers only use their eyes, and they will find this per- 
severing Yankee pushing his cheese into every little shop 
both in our towns and villages and even hawking them 
to our door, whilst we are holding ours because he is selling 
a better and a cheaper article." 

In Russia there are some factories, and tlie government has 
aided some of her young men in attaining a thorough knowl- 
edge of the best processes, and acquiring skill in their 
application ; and cheese and butter may be among the 
things which this almost limitless empire will in the future 
offer to the people of other countries. 

Our own system differs from those of the old world because 
the resources and genius of our people are different. Its ad- 
vantages, in the words of Professor Arnold, one of its most un- 
tiring champions, are that ''the parties engaged in it become 
mutual instructors. First, by an examination of each other's 
work; the manufactories being in a manner public and 
open for inspection. Second, by organizations for mutual 
giving and reception of information relating to their art, and 
thus knowledge is developed by which milk is more profitably 
produced, goods more skillfully and cheaply manufactured 
and more systematically and successfully handled." 



II. 

FOR AND AGAINST. HOW TO START. 

WHEN the system first began to be discussed there were 
urged for and against it the same reasons that we hear 
to-day when it is suggested in a locality where it has never 
been introduced ; but the experience of a quarter of a century 
makes it possible to speak of many things about it with a cer- 
tainty that could not be done when it was yet an untried 
scheme. 

In its favor can now be urged as facts what could then only 
be held out as promises, that : 

// will enable the milk producers of a neighborhood to have 
their milk taken from their hands as soon as it is drawn from 
the cow, aftd thus save them all further labor and care. 

The expense of manufacturing is less when conducted at one 
place with all the facilities, than wheii done at five or fifty 
places. 

It will raise the average quality of butter and cheese until 
in many instances they equal, and in some instances surpass, 
the best ever made in the neighborhood before its introduction. 

The objections which are usually made to the system are 
about as follows : 

1. It entails additional labor in hauling the milk to the 
creamery or factory. 

2. It makes an additional expense to the farmer and dairy- 
man, who must pay for doing work which could be done at 
home without detriment to his other work. 

(i6) 



FOR AND AGAINST. HOW TO START. 1 7 

3. It discriminates against the production of good rich milk, 
because poor or watered milk brings the same price per pound 
or quart. 

4. There is danger of the milk souring before it reaches the 
creamery. 

5. Milk will not yield as much butter when shaken about 
as it must be in transporting, as when it is set for cream at 
once when drawn and allowed to remain undisturbed. 

6 The whey and skim milk are lost to the producer. 

7. The factories are not in operation all the year round, and 
there must consequently be some arrangement for making but- 
ter and cheese at home part of the time. 

8. The milk must be delivered at certain stated hours in 
the morning, and it is often inconvenient to make every 
thing else subservient to the requirements in regard to this. 

9. // tends to overproduction. 

That it saves labor and care are strong considerations 
in its favor. In fully five-sixths of the farm dairies of 
the country, the labor and care and watchfulness insepara- 
ble from butter-making and cheese-makiilg by the old meth- 
ods, bear heaviest on the women ; and anything that will 
take away even a portion of these should be welcome. 
As a rule it is only on those farms where dairying is the 
main business or is done on a large scale that special help is 
procured or men do the work. In itself there is nothing det- 
rimental to health, but when as is often the case the produc- 
tion of milk is secondary to other things in the economy of 
the farm, yet the money to be got from it is too great an 
item to drop, and the income will not allow sufficient help to 
be hired, then the labor connected with handling the 
milk when the work is done at home is the last straw that 
breaks down the woman whose ordinary household duties are 



t8 associated dairying. 

as much as her strength will bear, and she helps to swell the 
list of women in ill-health which is already so large that it is 
a text always within sight for the modern physiological lec- 
turer to comment upon. It is not only that the work is got 
rid of when the milk i^ sent away at once, but it is off the 
inmd, which alone is often a great relief. 

The objection that it makes more work for the farmer be- 
cause he must hitch up a team and drive to the factory at 
least once, or, where milk is to be delivered morning and 
evening, twice a day, when if the butter was made at home, he 
would need to market that only once or twice a week, or if 
it were packed, or cheese made, still less frequently, would be 
a valid one if it were necessary for him to haul the milk himself, 
and in many places would be enough to prevent the system from 
ever gaining a footing. But it is not necessary. We can re- 
collect When in some of the thickly settled parts of the East the 
farmer went twice a week *' in the early morning, before the 
break of day" to the butcher shop to get his fresh beef; at 
present it is delivered at his gate in these same localities by 
the butcher's wagon, every day, if it is wanted, as far as ten 
miles away from the shop. The same can be and is done at 
the creamery with the milk. There will be some one easily 
found in every neighborhood where there is a creamery, ready 
and anxious for the job of gathering it up morning and evening, 
or the proprietor or manager can contract to do it himself. 
In many dairy districts, where dairying is the main work of 
the farm and but a few acres in every hundred are plowed and 
cultivated, there is not such a variety of work as where the farm- 
ing is more of a mixed character. There the farmers prefer to 
deliver the milk themselves, and the incessant rattling of their 
wagons for a few hours in the morning and evening is a fea- 
ture of rural life here that strikes the transient visitor at once 
by its novelty. 



FOR AND AGAINST. HOW TO START. 1 9 

In others the first-named plan is taken, and where the milk 
from a thousand cows is to be collected, perhaps twenty thou- 
sand pounds a day, as many as six teams over the same num- 
ber of routes may be needed to bring it in within the hours 
of delivery. Where only a few hundred cows are the extent 
of the operations, and the farms are close by, two or even one 
wagon can do it. 

The second claim that the expense of manufacturing is less 
than by the farm dairy method is clear. There is a great 
saving in time. We have seen two men make up the milk of 
four hundred and fifty cows into cheese, and have time enough 
left to play in a base-ball club three afternoons in a week, and 
without neglecting the cheese either. This was in the early 
part of the season, before there were many cheeses on hand. 
Later, when it accumulated in the curing-rooms, and needed 
turning and rubbing daily, they had the assistance of a woman, 
but still kept up the base-ball. Will any one suppose that if 
this work had been done at, say twenty private dairies, it would 
not, in the aggregate, have taken at least four times as long? 

In butter-making the saving of time is also very great. It 
has been estimated that it requires only from one-eighth to 
one-tenth the time that it would at home by the old methods. 
If the facilities afforded by the later methods of handling the 
milk and raising the cream are at hand, the difference will 
not be so striking, in fact it may be nearly equalized ; but it 
is in the very nature of things more expensive to fit up ten 
places instead of one, taking the difference in size into ac- 
count. A one-horse wagon costs more in proportion than a 
two-horse one, and so with everything where labor is an im- 
portant element in the cost. There is, besides, the saving 
effected in buying the material, salt, cheese-boxes, and other 
articles in large quantities, as is done at a factory. 



20 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

It is true that there is an expense for hauling the milk and 
making the butter and cheese, that must be paid for in money 
or its equivalent, which might be ^*kept in the family." 
This will have less weight when it is found that the money 
receipts, after this expense has been deducted, are equal to 
what they were when the work was done at home. 

The third claim, that it will raise the average quality of 
butter and cheese, has been proven quite true. There are 
many first-class groceries where formerly there were a dozen 
different grades of butter sold, and now only one, and that is 
good, and comes from a creamery. An evenness is secured 
'that cannot be attained otherwise. There is no excuse for 
carelessness here. The manager has but this to manage, the 
workman has only this work to do, and the skill that comes 
from doing one thing, and one only, with all the opportuni- 
ties for learning, must be his if he is fit for his place. 

The butter-maker who uses the milk from his own dairy 
only has one advantage — but how often he fails to improve it 
— he can select his cows and the food for them until he has 
exactly what will enable him, if he understands his business, 
to make a higher quality of butter than can be made at a 
creamery, unless it be an equally select one. When we 
take the best creamery butter and place it alongside of the 
products of the best fancy dairies, there will be but few, 
very few, indeed, of the latter that will surpass it in all the 
qualities that make butter of the highest excellence ; and 
even if there were many more than there are of these, the 
truth would still remain that for the vast majority of dairymen 
it would improve the butter many degrees. Nowhere has it 
made such a change as in the west. Not more than a dozen 
years ago the men. who wrote about dairying were agreed, 
without exception almost, that the west could not compete 



FOR AND AGAINST. HOW TO START. 21 

with what were then considered the natural dairy regions 
They pointed to the butter from there and called it ''grease;" 
but to-day that same country, from which nature was supposed 
to have withheld her dairy gifts, is selling its creamery pro- 
ducts, tons on tons, in the open market, at higher figures than 
the old dairy centres can get for theirs. 

In regard to the difference in the quality of milk, it will 
usually be found that the milk from the ordinary herds differs 
more in quantity than in richness. Good feed and treatment 
will increase the quantity of milk, but it will not (we know 
this is disputed) increase the percentage of butter and cheese 
much. Each pound or quart of milk will make about the 
same quantity of butter. There will be more quarts, and 
therefore more pounds of butter, but the general average at 
the creamery will neither be increased nor decreased. Of 
course, when a man has an exceptionally good butter herd — 
one that will yield him a pound of butter for every eight 
quarts of milk, he will not want to mix it with his neighbors', 
that makes only a pound to sixteen quarts — he would be fool- 
ish if he did at the same price per quart. This dif^culty can 
be met by the plan recently put into operation in Wisconsin, 
to which we shall refer further on. With watered milk there 
is little trouble at a creamery — what with cream gauges, per 
cent, glasses, and lactometers, there is very little chance to 
add water without detection. Public opinion among dairy- 
men in the vicinity of a creamery is so strong against this 
practice, to say nothing of the law, that it furnishes, with the 
tests that can always be made, an effectual safeguard. 

Some of the creameries show a very full butter yield from a 
given quantity of milk. We have in mind one where large 
pans are used, that last year made in June one pound of butter 
from every twenty-six and a half pounds of milk, and some 



2 2 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

reports which have come under our eye show as low as twenty- 
one to the pound of butter, from ordinary cows, of course. 
Some tests that have been made would go to show that the 
cream will not all rise after the milk has been at rest for some 
time, and is afterwards shaken up, but the yield above 
referred to shows that actually more butter is got out 
than is usual at home. Where the skim milk is sold or 
cheese is made from it, no fault could be found on this score. 

There is not much danger of the milk souring if the cans 
are kept perfectly clean. There is sometimes in hot weather 
a taint developed in milk soon after it is drawn, not only 
when the milk is taken away, but at home. Much very bad 
butter is made at these times, as well as cheese that will not 
stay in the bandage. Heating the milk enough to check this 
but not to scald it, and then cooling, is an effectual remedy. 
This can be done more readily at the creamery and factory 
than at the farm. 

The whey and skim milk can be returned to the producer 
if desired. They can take it home themselves when they 
have brought the milk, taking as much as they had milk, 
water enough will usually have been added to balance the 
cream and caseine taken out. Sometimes an arrangement can 
be made by which it can be run to some point, not too close, 
and there fed to pigs or calves. 

In the great cheese manufacturing centres the cows are 
allowed to dry in the fall, and during the winter there is not 
much milk to care for. The most inconvenience from facto- 
ries not being in operation all the time is felt in the early 
spring months, when many of the cows are fresh. Some 
creameries are now operated all the year round, but in many 
sections in the extreme north this does not seem desirable, and 
would hardly be profitable if generally attempted. 



HOW TO START. 23 

It is sometimes rather an inconvenience that the milk must 
be delivered at certain hours ; but then, as the limits in the 
morning are usually between half-past five and eight o'clock, 
sometime during these two hours and a half will suit just as 
well as if the whole day were open to choose from. When 
the milk is taken away from the door, it must be ready in time, 
and this will teach lessons of punctuality, which we must learn 
in many things; in these days we are all more or less travelers 
on the railways, and though the trains never wait, we gener- 
ally manage to go when we want to. 

It tends to overproduction. It looks that way now to some, 
but we think it would hardly be fair to charge this on the sys- 
tem. Dairying for many years was more profitable than most 
other departments of farming, and there was a gradual and 
steady extension of the industry which always follows when 
anything pays, and the level is by and by reached. There is 
not yet more butter and cheese than can be used, but the 
price is low, and so are other things. If there is overproduc- 
tion it will surely cure itself; the law of supply and demand 
operates here as elsewhere, and if the system tends to give the 
millions cheaper and better food, so much is gained to the 
world at large. We quote from Willard' s Dairy Husbandry, 
•'Aside from the burthens of toil, and the drudgery from 
which this system operates to relieve our farmers, it has de- 
veloped another great economic principle, the means of pro- 
ducing food cheaply, a principle which the Creator in his in- 
finite wisdom is now impressing upon the minds of people by 
the establishment and wide dissemination of this system." 

HOW TO START. 

When the question of a creamery or no creamery, factory 
or no factory, is once started in a community, the plan under 



24 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

which it is to be operated has a prominent place in the dis- 
cussion. 

In the early days they were for the most part run on the 
co-operative plan. A few persons would agitate the subject 
until finally a meeting would be called, and the milk pro- 
ducers of a neighborhood would agree to organize an associa- 
tion for the purpose of making cheese or butter. They would 
elect officers — a president, secretary and treasurer — and form 
a joint stock company for the purpose of raising funds to put 
up the buildings and furnish the apparatus needed. 

There would be a committee on building, and when it 
once went into operation, a committee on management 
and the sale of the products ; but it was soon found that to 
put the management in the hands of one man would tend to 
more promptness of action when anything needed to be done ; 
and before long individuals put up buildings on their own 
account, and conducted the business on the same basis as 
before — that is, giving each patron of the factory a share of 
the proceeds in proportion to the quantity of milk furnished 
by each — after charging a certain fixed price per pound for 
making and selling. 

At present they are largely run on the plan of buying the 
milk outright. The butter and cheese thus becomes at once 
the property of the proprietor or conductor of the factory. 
Those who furnish the milk know exactly what they are get- 
ting, and the business for the manufacturer partakes more or 
less of the risk attached to all enterprises where the raw mate- 
rial is bought and the finished products taken into another 
market at a future time. In some districts an individual or 
firm now runs a number of factories ; one firm in Central New 
York had the past season over twenty, and another in Ohio 
thirteen. This wide control by one central power gives an 



HOW TO START. 25 

opportunity to have a number of manufactories under the 
care of persons of the very highest skill, and the selling also 
being under the control of one person, reduces the expenses 
of this part of the business to the minimum ; but the co- 
operative feature does not belong to this modification of the 
system. 

One of the most popular plans is one already referred to, 
namely, to appoint an experienced man as manager and 
salesman. Every operation at the factory is conducted under 
his personal oversight, and he does the selling at such times 
from week to week, or month to month, as seem most likely 
to bring the best returns. After every sale he settles with 
the patrons, dividing the proceeds in proportion to the num- 
ber of pounds of milk they have furnished, first deducting his 
charges for making, which the past season averaged probably 
one and a half cents per pound for cheese, and three cents 
or more for butter, the manufacturer furnishing everything 
but the milk. 

From what has been said, it will be seen that two different 
and distinct plans present themselves : 

1. The co-operative, where everything is done by asso- 
ciated effort, and the proceeds divided pro rata. 

2. The commercial, where the milk is sold to the manu- 
facturer at once. 

The different modifications have already been alluded to. 
The second is more in accordance with general business usages, 
and the first offers a fine opportunity to test the value of co- 
operation in production, which has often been held out as the 
hope of the producing classes in the future. 

The risks in the second method are of different kinds. 
Sometimes when an individual builds a creamery on his own 
account, and runs it a while, some trifling unpleasantness oc- 
2 



26 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

curs and some of the patrons stop off with the milk, and he 
loses on his investment, when if it was run on the co-operative 
plan, and each had an interest in its success, they might con- 
tinue on. It often takes considerable capital to tide over the 
periods of depression in the trade. During the past year one 
of the firms mentioned had contracted with some of the milk 
producers for milk at one dollar per hundred pounds : had 
they closed such contracts at all the twenty odd factories 
which they were conducting, the loss to them would have 
amounted to five hundred dollars a day ; but fortunately they 
had not. The co-operative system would have distributed 
the lessened income among the entire numer of patrons, pro- 
bably eight hundred or more. There has been complaint, too, 
at some where a fixed price is paid the manufacturer, and 
in a few sections the dissatisfied dairymen propose putting up 
new ones, and running them on their own account entirely. 

It is these periods of low prices, that bring out the weak 
spots in cny system. The dairy industry must at present take 
its turn with the rest ; it has always been a profitable one, 
and where conducted on correct principles will be likely to 
remain so, though hardly ever to the same extent that it has 
been. With the best cheese at twenty and twenty-five cents 
a pound, as it was during the war and since, the profits were 
too much above the average to continue. 



III. 

CREAMERS* AND OTHER APPARATUS. 

When the fixtures of a factory are spoken of, we recall at 
once the costly and complicated machinery seen in 
factories where cotton, or iron, or wood, are made into the 
thousand and one articles which we see everywhere. In but- 
ter and cheese making only a few and simple pieces are really 
needed. The cream must be raised, preserved in good con- 
dition, and churned ; the buiter worked, salted, packed and 
marketed ; but there is nothing needed for doing either of 
these, except the simplest fixtures, though there is here as 
everywhere a wide difference between the best and the worst. 
For cheese, the milk must be set and curded, the whey sepa- 
rated, and the curd ground, salted, pressed and cured, and 
neither of these operations needs complex apparatus. 

Creamery apparatus and dairy apparatus do not differ es- 
sentially. Size is the main distinction, and we shall here 
speak of both, because what will answer for a large dairy 
house will be nearly what is needed in a small creamery. We 
cannot however touch this subject of apparatus and fixtures 
without some reference to the different plans and vessels for 
long years in use for cream raising. 

In the order of time the earthen vessels come first, and 
then shallow wooden tubs, which are still used for the pur- 
pose in some foreign lands, followed by the shallow tin pans. 
While there are yet many earthen pots or crocks used in 
some sections, they have been gradually supplanted in the 
dairies of this country by the tin pans, which are more 

( --1 ) 



28 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

easily cleaned and more conveniently handled. In some 
essential points the former were superior; and those who use 
them, though often told that they are behind the age, are not 
so very far wrong after all. The deep cans or cooler pails now 
used in many creameries and dairies come next. These, or 
something similar, set in ice water, are used in the Swedish 
system of deep setting which has attracted so much attention 
within the last ten years. Tight boxes or tanks, made of 
two-inch pine plank, hold the water, and when the tempera- 
ture of this is kept about thirty-eight degrees with ice, the 
cream rises in ten to twelve hours. The cans are from nine- 
teen to twenty -five inches in depth and from eight to ten 
inches in diameter, and are usually set in the water nearly to 
their tops and left uncovered. When earthen pots were 
used there was often a wooden tank with cover to hold the 
water, in which they were set. Sometimes there was no cover 
to the tank or box, and the milk vessels had round covers of 
wood or slate, or a tin plate placed directly on them. This is 
yet common enough where the milk is set in this way as well 
as when it stands in cupboards; and on shelves in our kitchens, 
as it does on thousands of farms, and when the cover fits 
well, the outside air is pretty thoroughly excluded. Those 
Avho have always insisted that the milk must be aired, have 
of course not put on the covers, at least not until the airing 
was completed. Tin covers are perhaps the best. In the 
deep cans, when covered in this way, and in a cool or cold 
place (not so cold as to freeze, however,) the milk keeps 
sweet a long time, at least until all, .or nearly all, the cream 
has come to the top. When the cans are set in water, they 
can be made air-tight by having the cap extend down the 
outside a few inches until the edge comes below the surface 
of the water ; but care must be taken to lift the can high 



CREAMERS AND OTHER APPARATUS. 29 

enough to have the cap entirely clear of the water when the 
can is to be uncovered, otherwise the water will rush in when 
the cap is drawn up ; and the water must never be allowed to 
come within an inch of the* top of the can — if it does, there 
may some of it run into the milk. 

Of the various arrangements which have lately been brought 
prominently before the public, and which use the deep can, 
we shall refer to a few which will serve as types of all. 

That of Mr. L. S. Hardin consists of a box with double 
sides and a close-fitting door, so as to entirely exclude the 
surrounding atmosphere. A shelf for ice is placed inside near 
the top of the box. As it is the nature of heated air to ascend, 
this secures a uniform temperature. A space of one inch is 
left on each side of the shelf to allow the air to pass around 
the ice. The cans are twelve to twenty inches deep, and 
eight inches in diameter, and they have covers which fit over 
them on the outside. At first the drippings from the ice were 
allowed to fall on the cans and collect on the floor of the box, 
so that the cans would stand in cold water to the depth of 
several inches, but for the shelf there is now substituted a pan 
containing a wooden rack. The ice is placed on the rack, 
and the pan holds the water from the melting ice, and pro- 
vision is made for running the water out above the cans. The 
door is also extended all the way to the bottom, which makes 
it easier to lift the cans in and out of the box. The milk is 
allowed to stand from thirty-six to seventy-two hours before 
skimming; is skimmed sweet, and can be used for cheese- 
making or by those who buy sweet skim milk. 

Some of the best butter makers in the country commend 
this method, after having thoroughly tested it alongside of the 
shallow pans, and the deep cans set as in the Swedish system. 

The Cooley creamer, which is of later introduction, is also 



3° 



ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 



a double-box, water tight, and opening by a lid on top. The 
cans are of similar size and shape to those used in Hardin's. 
The box is kept filled with water, and the cans with the milk 
are entirely submerged — having water over top as well as 
around them. The cover with which each can is fitted, is in 
the shape of a deep tin dish, and, inverted on top of the can, 
keeps out the water on the principle of the diving bell. It 
is kept in place by a strip of wood running over top of it, 
from side to side of the box. Each can is also fitted 
with an ingenious attachment, by which the milk can first 
be drawn out below, and the cream afterwards be poured 
out, and there is also an arrangement for drawing off the milk 
from each can without taking it out of the box. The box is 
supplied with water through a pipe at the bottom, and near 
the top there is an opening for the warmer water to pass off. 
The time needed to raise the cream depends on the tempera- 
ture at which the water is kept. At fifty to sixty degrees, it 
will require from twenty-four hours upwards, but when broken 
ice is kept in the water and the temperature reduced below 
forty degrees, the cream will come up in ten or twelve hours. 
We have seen very fine butter made from cream raised in this 
creamer. It will be seen that both these methods provide for 
a uniform temperature throughout the vessel in which the 
milk cans are set; in the one the air inside of it is cooled, 
in the other the water in which the cans are submerged. 

The creamer of Mr. O. S. Bliss is constructed with refer- 
ence to cooling from the top. The cans used in this are 
about twelve inches in depth ; the diameter is seven inches at 
the bottom, and ten at the top ; the box has double sides, like 
the two just described, and opens partly on top and partly 
at one side. The lower portion is water tight, and in this 
the cans are placed in water nearly their full depth ; over 



CREAMERS AND OTHER APPARATUS. 3 1 

tncin IS cL sheet-iron partition with holes cut in it to fit the 
top of" the cans, their covers thus becoming, as it were, a part 
of the paitition; on this the ice is placed in large pieces; 
and the top of the milk in the cans receives the first effect 
of the cooling process. In the latest form of this creamer 
the cans are all connected at the bottom, so that the milk 
to fill the whole of them can be strained in at one place, 
and when the cieam has risen, the milk can first be drawn 
from all without taking the cans out of the box, and after- 
wards the cream can be drawn in the same way. This saver 
all lifting and handling, and makes an arrangement so con 
venient that it would seem nothing more could be desired 
Long narrow tanks can be used in place of the cans if these 
are preferred. 

The manner of cooling from the top, is the essential prin- 
ciple in this creamer. It is the result of much study and ex- 
periment in cream raising on the part of Mr. Bliss, who is 
well-known as the efficient Secretary of the Vermont Dairy- 
man's Association, and, it will be seen, combines the advant- 
ages of both the can and the pan system of setting. 

The latter we shall now examine. We can however look 
at only a few of the great number made. They are nearly 
all patented, as are the several plans of deep setting just men 
tioned. The pans are mostly rectangular in form, varying in 
width from two feet to six, and in length from four feet to 
twenty, and in depth from six to eighteen inches. When 
they are six inches in depth, each square foot of surface will 
contain about thirty-two pounds, or nearly three and three- 
quarter gallons of milk. They should be made of the 
best tin : dealers often lay stress on the fact that theirs is 
X X X X (four cross). They are usually placed inside of an 
outer receptacle, like the pan in form, only enough larger to 



32 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

leave a space between the two through which water can be 
run; the outer is made of wood or galvanized iron. In 
their simplest form they can be put together by any worker 
in tin and wood, and fitted with faucets and pipes to supply 
the water for cooling or warming the milk. As there are 
many manufacturers who make a specialty of this kind of 
work, and build largely, they can often furnish all that be- 
longs to a complete pan or set of pans, all ready to put 
together, shipped in compact shape, at a less price than the 
materials alone will cost if bought separately away from the 
commercial centres. 

There are points of excellence claimed for all of those 
most commonly used, but some have more than others. The 
aim in all is to facilitate the work as much as possible, and 
afford means of controlling the temperature ; but there are 
different theories in regard to the proper temperature, and 
the means of attaining it, and the pans are constructed on differ- 
ent plans. We will describe several of those in common use 
as plainly as we can, naming some special ones which will 
give an idea of what is needed. 

The "Iron-clad" pan is double, with the outer of galvan- 
ized iron. It is set on standards two or two and a-half feet 
from the floor. The outer pan fits the inner tightly at the 
top, but leaves a space at the sides and below. The water 
circulates freely around the inner pan, which contains the 
milk, and the milk can be cooled in a short time after it is 
poured in. The faucets and pipes are of the best material, 
conveniently arranged, so there need be no stepping over the 
pipes where they cross the floor, and everything is soldered 
and attached in such a way that there can be no leakage nor 
spattering of sour milk on the floor, which is important; and 
all can be readily taken apart for cleaning. 



CREAMERS AND OTHER APPARATUS. 33 

The milk pan is japanned on the outside, and the vat on 
the inside, both where the water comes in contact with them. 
Four are needed to complete a set where the milk is to stand 
forty-eight hours before skimming ; a heating arrangement is 
attached when wanted, by which the milk can be warmed to 
any temperature desired. They are also sometimes furnished 
with glass covers; these afford a good protection against flies 
and dust. There are means of ventilation below the covers 
to suit those who want the animal odor to escape. 

The ''Smith Refrigerating Creamer, or Creamery Vat" is a 
very complete piece of apparatus. It can be used as an ordin- 
ary pan for setting milk for cream only, and also for making 
cheese from the skim milk afterward. The inner pan is sur- 
rounded by a wooden covering, with the usual space between 
the two for the water to circulate. Two hollow tin partitions 
run lengthwise; they are about one and a half inches 
in thickness, and divide the creamer into three long narrow 
compartments, lo or 12 inches wide, 18 inches deep. Cold 
water, for cooling, is run through the hollow partitions as well 
as around the sides, and there is a tight-fitting cover to it under 
which ice-pans can be placed after the milk has been cooled 
as low as can be done with water. There are small flues in 
the cover that can be opened to allow any vapor that arises 
to pass off. When it is desired to raise the temperature of 
the milk, this is first done, either by running warm water in 
place of cold around it, or by injecting steam directly into 
it; and then it can be cooled either rapidly with ice, or 
more slowly with water. After the cream has risen it can 
either be skimmed off, or by means of a faucet in the bottom, 
the milk can first be drawn off below, and then the cream run 
off into the cream vat, or directly into the churn. If cheese is 
to be made, the milk can remain, the partitions be removed, 



34 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

and the cheese made in the vat; or the milk can be run 
directly into a cheese vat, if that can be placed a few feet 
lower. This creamer received the highest award at the 
International Dairy Fair in New York. 

A "Creamer" used in some of the Iowa creameries, also 
has long narrow compartments, and space for ice or 
water around the milk ; it is much liked by those who have 
it in use. 

The Arctic milk cooler of Mr. I. H. Wanzer, also manufac- 
tured and used in the west, has a cover, and cools the milk 
from the top either by running cold spring water over the 
cover, or by the use of ice for this purpose. Like all others 
provided with tight covers, it can be set and filled with milk 
in a room where other work is going on, as in the manufactur- 
ing room of a creamery, which can not always be done with 
open vessels without danger of contaminating the milk and 
its products. 

Of churns and butter workers there are great numbers. 
The main thing aimed at in both of these now is to preserve 
the grain of the butter unbroken while gathering it, and in- 
corporating the salt most thoroughly. 

The common cheese vat is oblong, sixteen or eighteen 
inches deep, raised from the floor a foot or two, and is double, 
with the outside of wood two inches thick, the inside of tin, 
and a space between the tin and wood for water or steam to 
warm the milk, or water to cool it. The curd knives are in 
the form of a series of narrow blades, set in a frame one 
above the other horizontally, or one alongside of the other 
vertically. The curd mill is placed on top of the vat, and 
has a cylinder with either pegs or knives. 

The cheese presses are of various forms. In the large 
creameries or factories a gang press is used, by which a num- 



CREAMERS AND OTHER APPARATUS. 35 

ber of cheese are pressed at once. The hoops in which the 
cheese are pressed are of the forms with which we are familiar 
in the various sizes of cheese, and are of wood or galvanized 
iron. 



lY. 

METHODS OF CONDUCTING CREAMERIES AND MAKING 
CREAMERY BUTTER. 

IN the earlier days of associated dairying, when exception- 
ally high prices were being obtained for cheese, it was 
apparent to those who conducted the establishments where 
butter alone was made, that the caseine of the skim-milk 
could be put to better use than in feeding calves and pigs, 
and they commenced turning it into cheese, and their butter 
factory became a creamery of one kind ; but as the cream 
was nearly all taken for butter, the product was a very thin 
skim-cheese. 

On the other hand, the cheese-makers saw that they could 
take some of the cream out of their milk and turn it into 
butter to their evident profit, and continue to make a fair 
cheese, that would sell nearly or altogether at the same figures 
as when the cream was all in. Their cheese factory then 
became a creamery of another kind. By the last process 
only the cream was taken for butter that raised over night 
from the evening's milk at a temperature of 60 degrees. This 
made delicious butter, because only the best of the cream was 
obtained, and it was this butter that helped to establish the 
reputation which creamery butter now bears. It will thus 
be seen that there were two kinds of creameries, and as has 
already been remarked, when butter alone was made the name 
was not at first applied ; it will here be used in its wider 
meaning, as now applied to the making of butter and cheese, 
but not to cheese-making alone. 

(36) 



MErHODS OF CONDUCTING CREAMERIES: 37 

The different plans of operating a creamery may be best 
presented by showing how creameries of the various kinds 
ah^eady established are conducted. To describe what has 
been done may be more satisfactory than to give the details 
of what might be done. 

Many of the older creameries are run on the pail and pool 
system) where the spring water is made to flow through a 
pool in the building, and the deep cans or coolers are used 
for setting the milk. One of the most successful that we 
know is operated in this way. It is located in Southern New 
York, and is not a large one, taking the milk of only 200 
cows. These are rather above the ordinary dairy cow ; a 
sprinkling of Jerseys among them gives somewhat of a Jersey 
character to the butter. 

The building is 60 feet long and 25 feet wide, partly 
two-story, built on ground sloping to the south, with its ends 
north and south. The north end was excavated about eight 
feet, and leveled. The south end was also leveled a few feet 
lower than the other end. The foundation walls come two 
feet above ground. The superstructure is of frame, with 
eight -inch posts, boarded inside and outside, with an air- 
space of eight inches between. It is two story, but as the 
lower story runs against the bank at the north end, this has 
been arranged for a cellar. 

The pool is at the south end, twenty feet square. The 
water flows in at the northwest corner, in an underground 
pipe, from the spring a few yards away, at a temperature of 
53 degrees, five or six gallons a minute, and has its outlet at 
the southeast corner. The whole pool is kept under water to 
the depth of about eighteen inches. It is in four divisions, 
and the water can be raised or lowered in each one. It has 
a floor of pine plank, under the water. On this the cans 



38 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

Stand. The cans are not covered ; they are scarcely ever 
covered at any of the creameries. Loose planks are thrown 
across from one division to the other, and are used to walk 
on when the cans are carried in or removed from the water. 
In the southwest corner is a small platform, close to the 
water, on which the butter is worked in the warm weather. 

The remainder of the lower story is divided into two 
rooms. In the middle one stands the cheese vat, and the 
cheese is made here. At the north, on the east side, is the 
churning, and alongside is a room for the small boiler and 
steam engine used in churning and furnishing the heat and 
steam for cheese-making. The second story has a room in the 
southeast corner for the butter and cheese-maker to sleep in, 
and alongside of it is a store-room. All the rest of the story 
is used as a cheese-curing room. The cheese are arranged on 
tables and on tiers of shelves, one above the other. 

The milk is delivered morning and evening, and fifty of 
the deep cans hold one '' mess" of milk. As the milk stands 
in the cans forty-eight hours before it is skimmed, two hun- 
dred cans are required. Churning is done every day, and the 
butter worked with an Orange county butter-worker, salted, 
and allowed to stand some hours, and worked again, and is 
then packed either in return tubs and sent to New York 
fresh, or packed away in half firkins and placed in the cellar 
for a future market. When the cows were in their full flow, 
200 pounds of butter were made a day, and even the past dull 
season none was sold under twenty-five cents a pound. The 
milk was paid for on the basis of the butter market, and thir- 
teen quarts of milk to a pound of butter. If the butter sold for 
twenty-six cents a pound, the patrons would receive two 
cents a quart for the milk. 

The skimmed milk was made into cheese. Six of these, 



METHODS OF CONDUCTING CREAMERIES. 



39 



averaging 40 pounds each, were made a day, at the same 
time when 200 pounds of butter a day were being made. The 
yield of butter through the season was about 200 pounds to 
each cow, and about the same of cheese. 

One of the other kind — conducted on the plan of skim- 
ming only the evening's milk — we saw in the afternoon of a 
hot' day in August. When we went to it, we met on the 
road an open, uncovered wagon, with two horses, contain- 
ing ten large carrying cans, with a capacity varying from 
200 to 450 pounds each. There were ten on the wagon, and 
two vacant places showed that two had been taken off. The 
driver stopped as we passed, and showed us the way to the 
creamery, and also told us that his route extended a distance 
of eight miles from it ; that he went twice a day, making 
thirty-two miles going and returning each day. As we 
passed on, we saw where the cans were left that had been on 
his wagon when he started out. They stood before the gates 
of two farm houses, on platforms of a single plank about 
three feet from the ground, ready to receive the milk from 
the evening's milking. In this way he drove on until the 
end of his route was reached, leaving a can with each of 
the patrons. The creamery soon came in sight. It was 
one of the largest we ever saw — 130 feet long and 40 feet 
wide. It was two stories high, with walls of blue stone, and 
a good double-boarded frame superstructure. Towards even- 
ing it commenced raining, and when the time came for 
delivering the milk it was still raining rapidly; but no 
account is taken of this. The farmers who delivered their own 
milk came hurrying up to the receiving window, had their 
cans hoisted up and drawn in by the lad at the crane. The 
milk was poured into a weighing can on a scales that admitted 
of weighing four different lots before the can needed to be 



40 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

emptied. The weight of each one's milk is put down in the 
book, the gate of the weighing can opened, and the milk runs 
along an open tin spout into the vats. The wagon drives 
away and another takes its place. It was now growing dusk, 
and the wagons that had been out gathering up milk were 
coming in. There were three besides the one I had met, 
but none had quite such a long route, though one of the 
others had six miles and it took him five hours to make the 
round trip. He started at three o'clock in the morning and in 
the afternoon at the same hour and by eight was back at the 
factory, but until he got home and his cans cleaned it was 
nine. The milk was distributed through four vats that held 
each 5C00 pounds of milk. Neither was quite half full, and 
cold water was run around them to cool the milk as fast as 
possible. It was stirred to help the cooling down to sixty 
degrees; then it was allowed to remain at rest for the cream 
to raise over night. The next morning it was skimmed. 
The morning's milk, as soon as it came in, was distributed 
through all the. vats and cheese made. At the time when 
the cows were giving most milk, sixty-two cheese — three thou- 
sand pounds — a day were made. The ni'lk was taken from 
over eleven hundred cows. 

The butter was made in a sub-cellar ; churning was done 
every two or three days, and about one pound of butter was 
made to every hundred pounds of milk. The cheese was 
nearly full cream, and about 50,000 pounds were in the cur- 
ing room at the time of our visit. Four men were employed 
about ihe creamery, and one dollar a hundred pounds was paid 
for the milk. The men who hauled the milk from a distance 
got three dollars per cow for hauling. They had a contract 
for the full season, to November, with the proprietor of the 
creamery, and he deducted that amount from the patrons, at 



METHODS OF CONDUCTING CREAMERIES. 4 1 

the final settlement with them at the close of the season. For 
bringing it in from the immediate vicinity less would., as a 
matter of course, be paid ; but to go eight miles, even far as it 
may seem, the price paid seemed to us ample, as one man and 
his two-horse team could easily bring the milk from 250 cows. 
This building had four divisions on the first floor — a boiler 
and engine room at one end, then the manufacturing room 
with the four large vats, the press room with a large hori- 
zontal gang-press, and finally an immense curing room. 
There was also one room above this, very large, but not ex- 
tending the whole length of the building. These two rooms 
contained the cheese on hand. The ground sloped away from 
the building on one side, and the whey was run down here in 
a pipe into a tank, out of which it was pumped into the cans 
in which the milk was brought, at least so much of it as was 
wanted for the pigs and calves on the farms. 

Everything was in nice shape, and showed good manage- 
ment, and the butter and cheese which we tasted were good ; 
but we could not help observing that it was less desirable to 
collect the milk from such a large territory, than from the 
immediate neighborhood, when cows enough were kept. The 
milk is exposed to the heat too long, and where the roads are 
rough and hilly — here they were level and good — the labor 
of transportation is too great. 

When large pans are used and no cheese made, the labor 
about a creamery is much less than at either of those de- 
scribed. One of these which occurs to us now is simply a 
stone dairy-house enlarged, built on ground sloping to the 
south — it were better north — the lower story half under 
ground. There are six pans, six feet by sixteen, and they 
occupy all of one room forty-four feet long by twenty wide, 
leaving only narrow passage-ways between them, and along 



42 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

one side of the room between their ends and the wall. They 
stand nearly against the wall on the north side, and the water 
for cooling comes in through a pipe here. They hold the 
milk of three hundred cows, and the milk stands in them 
thirty-six hours before the cream is taken off. The milk is 
run out below, and the cream is sometimes skimmed off, and 
sometimes dipped out with a large scoop and run into the 
cream-vat which stands in a separate room at the east end. 

Water from the spring is kept around this tank all the time, 
and the temperature of the cream never goes above sixty de- 
grees. The churning is done in this room every other day, 
by a power churn holding 150 gallons of cream. The power 
is a small steam engine outside. The boiler, besides making 
steam for this, also warms the water around the pans in cold 
weather, for butter is made here all the year round. On the 
south side of the milk room, shaded by a porch with vines 
running up in front, is the work room, where the butter is 
worked and some of it made into pound and half-pound 
prints. There is a large lever press for doing this neatly and 
expeditiously. It is marketed as soon as made, at least as 
often as twice a week, and always sells for the highest market 
price. Much of it goes to customers who will ''take no 
other," and this brings more than market, price. There is 
plenty of spring water here, and a great deal is needed, the 
aim being to cool the milk as rapidly as possible until it is 
brought down to 60 degrees, and then to keep the butter as 
near to that temperature as possible all the time, until it goes 
into the hands of the consumer. 

Good butter can be made in more than one way, if the 
three essentials — good milk, temperature, and cleanliness — 
can be commanded. Two letters, both from manufacturers 
of creamery butter of the highest class, are now before us. In 



METHODS OF CONDUCTING CREAMERIES. 43 

regard to their mode of making butter, one says, '' We use a 
patent milk vat which allows water to run around the milk. 
We use ice, but not in the milk, and let the milk stand thirty- 
six hours if it does not show signs of thickening. Never let 
the milk thicken before we take off the cream. Churn at a 
temperature of 58 to 60 degrees in summer, 62 to 65 degrees 
in winter, in a square box revolving churn : do not let the 
butter form in mass before we wash out the buttermilk : salt 
one ounce per pound : set by twenty-four hours : then work 
and wash thoroughly until all the buttermilk is out. Our 
butter rooms are usually half below and half above ground. 
This is the substance of our mode of manufacturing,' and we 
have made, and shipped to Philadelphia, eight thousand 
pounds per week." 

The other writes, ''Our theory is that it is full as well to let 
the cream remain on the milk until it has matured, say, from 
twenty-four to thirty hours, but for fine butter, the less milk 
you take off wfth the cream the better. We use the ordinary 
deep cooler for setting our milk, from eight to nine inches in 
diameter and twenty inches deep. According to our view, 
the cream must stand at a proper temperature, for a sufficient 
length of time after it is taken off, for it to go through the 
ripening process. In other words, it should have a certain 
degree of acidity before churning, and the less milk there is 
in the cream to sour, the better flavored butter we will get. 
We use the ordinary square box revolving churn, and none 
but the best factory filled salt. In warm weather we receive 
milk twice a day, but have never made any distinction be- 
tween the night and morning's milk for fine butter. We ex- 
pect to make this season fifteen hundred pounds a day in 
two factories." 

Washing the butter is, by many, preferred to working it, for 



44 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

removing the buttermilk. If done properly, it does this more 
effectually than working. One of the best methods is that 
in use at some of the creameries where fancy butter is made. 
The churning is done as usual, with a moderate motion, till 
the butter begins to come, with the contents of the churn 
about 60 degrees. Cold water is then added at several intervals 
until the temperature is reduced about 5 degrees, the churn- 
ing being continued with a slower motion until all the butter 
forms in small granules (which it will always do if the tem- 
perature is low enough), and these will be free from but- 
termilk in their interior. Of course they will rise to the 
top in the churn, and may be dipped out into a bowl of cold 
water, and washed by stirring until the milk is all out, 
or the buttermilk may be run out of the churn if a strainer 
is placed inside the opening, and the water poured in, and the 
washing be done in the churn ; the water being withdrawn 
and fresh added until the milk is all removed, which will 
be when the water becomes only slightly discolored. This is 
quickly and easily done. As soon as the water is drawn off, 
it is ready to salt. In this condition the salting can be done 
without much working. The grain remains unbroken, and 
butter of the highest flavor and best quality is obtained. 
There are those who believe that the aroma of butter is lost 
by washing, but this need not be if it is properly done. 
Washing in brine is still more effective. Mr. Lewis T. 
Hawley, of Syracuse, N. Y., in a recent essay,* referring to 
what he said in 1875 ^'•'^ regard to this method, which he had 
practised for several years previous to that date, says, "In- 
stead of transferring the butter into a sieve, as I have directed 
in my old essay, I would draw off the buttermilk as soon as 
the butter comes to the size of a wheat kernel, and pour on 

* Transactions of American Dairymen's Association, 1879. 



METHODS OF CONDUCTING CREAMERIES. 45 

cold saturated brine (made from pure dairy salt), enougti to 
float the butter, and let it stand some thirty minutes. Then 
draw off the brine, and float the butter again in cold saturated 
brine, letting it stand some forty minutes. The object of 
letting it stand in the brine is to more perfectly dissolve the 
cheese matter and sugar of milk, so that when you draw off 
the brine you leave the butter nearly or quite free from the 
two substances, which, when coming in contact with oxygen, 
form butyric and other acids, so deleterious to butter. Then 
carefully transfer the butter in the same form, without any 
working, into a thoroughly cleansed firkin or vessel (air-tight), 
which you have partly filled with pure saturated cold brine. 
When you have filled the firkin with butter, head it up, 
having a hole in the head, so that the firkin can be filled full 
of brine, and keep it in a cool, sweet place. 

''I predict that butter will be kept and sent to market in this 
condition, and when customers use butter without salt, it can 
be taken from the brine while in this pellet form, and washed 
with fresh water entirely free from salt, and worked together 
for the table; or, when wanted flavored with salt, it can be 
worked into shape for use. In either case it can be placed in 
market and on the table, in large or small quantities, superior 
in quality to butter treated and shipped to market in the 
usual way." 

Messrs. Whitman & Burrell, of Little Falls, N. Y., give 
a description of Prof. Arnold's patent process of making 
butter and cheese from scalded milk, and buttermilk, the 
product of scalded milk, which we include here. The method 
as given, applies to milk as handled in large quantities, and 
worked in their creamery vat; but, slightly modified, will 
answer equally well when there is but a little, or with any of 
the vats or pans in common use. They charge a small royalty 
for its use. 



46 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

Their directions are as follows : 

" Tst. Have the patrons bring the milk to the factory while 
it is warm, immediately after it is drawn from the cows, and 
run the milk directly into the vats from the weighing cans. 

" 2d. After a portion of the milk is in the vat, and while 
the rest is being received, turn a jet of steam directly from 
the boiler (be particular that only pure clean water is used in 
the boiler), into the milk, and heat the entire mass of milk 
up in this way to 132 degrees Fahrenheit. If any of the milk 
at any time has a bad flavor about it, if detected in time, dis- 
card it, of course, but if it gets into the vat with the mass of 
milk, then heat up to 140 degrees to 145 degrees ; then at 
once turn on the cold water and run it around the tin vat and 
also through the partitions ; this will cool the milk very 
rapidly to the temperature of the water, and the cream, which 
will begin to rise just as soon as the jet of steam used to heat 
the milk is turned off, will be coming to the surface rapidly ; 
then the application of the ice and salt in the ice pans will 
rapidly thin the mass of milk again, as.it nears the freezing 
point, and the cream will be gathered on the surface. 

"Heating the milk serves two purposes. First, it kills any 
taint in the milk, and destroys that which makes butter 
become rancid ; and milk which is heated immediately after 
being drawn from the cow to 130 degrees, and then cooled 
as quickly as possible, will keep sweet very much longer than 
milk not so treated. Observe that the milk is not heated up 
sufficiently to give it a scalded flavor. The second im- 
portant feature secured by heating the milk is, that when it is 
thus hot the milk expands (milk is expanded, and therefore 
thinner, at the freezing and boiling points), and while in 
this state the cream globules are released. 

''3d. In the Arnold process, now under consideration, the 



METHODS OF CONDUCTING CREAMERIES. 47 

cream from the milk, which has been treated as above de- 
scribed, is at once placed in the churn while sweet, and the 
temperature raised to 60 degrees or 62 degrees (the churning 
point), by means of a jet of steam being thrown directly into 
the cream. Now churn ; as soon as the butter comes, appear- 
ing in kernels, so to speak, about the size of wheat, throw in 
a pailful or so of clear cold water, and churn again for a 
moment only. Do not gather the butter in the churn as is 
usual, but at once draw off the buttermilk and run cold water 
into the churn, and thoroughly rinse the butter once in this 
way; then take the butter out carefully into the butter-bowls, 
add and incorporate the salt with just as little working or 
manipulating as possible, and then put aside until the next 
day, when it should be worked again in such a way as not to 
break the grain ; then pack and store in a room where the 
temperature is about 60 degrees or 62 degrees. It can then 
be shipped to market in three or four days afterwards, or kept 
for months if desired ; for the heating of the milk, as before 
stated, kills the germs in the milk that tend to make butter 
rancid. While ordinarily good butter cannot be made from 
sweet cream, by this plan most delicious butter is produced 
of excellent keeping qualities. All butter for hot climates 
should be made in this way. 

"4th. But to return to the skimmed milk. While the 
cream is being churned the skimmed milk should be heated up 
for cheese-making to about Zd degrees, and by this time the 
butter has 'come,' so that the sweet buttermilk can be drawn 
off as heretofore described. Add all this sweet buttermilk to 
the mass of skimmed milk, and then add the rennet and color- 
ing, and proceed to make cheese as usual, gradually heating 
up to 96 degrees or 98 degrees, etc. Let the whey become 
somewhat sour or acid before separating the curd from ihe 



48 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

whey ; this course is better for skim-milk cheese than" pursu- 
ing the Cheddar plan of cheese-making from full or un- 
skimmed milk, which provides for running off the whey while 
it is sweet, and then letting the curd itself become acid before 
salting. By this Arnold process, run off the whey after it 
becomes slightly acid, then pack the curd in the vat and keep 
it warm by letting the cover of the vat down over it to exclude 
the cold air ; after remaining in this way for a few moments, 
cut the curd up into "chunks," and run through the curd 
mill ; then salf and put to press. After the cheese are taken 
from the press, try and keep them in a room where the tem- 
perature can be kept at 70 degrees, and you will have a very 
fine palatable cheese, considering that it is skimmed (no 
cream worth speaking of being left in it). At all events the 
skimmed cheese thus produced from scalded milk and butter- 
milk — the product of scalded milk — will be decidely better 
and bring more in market than the ordinary skims." 

Heating the milk before it is set for cream is not new, but 
it was never practiced to any great extent until within the 
last few years. It is sometimes objected that it is too much 
of a forcing process to heat milk to 130 or 140 degrees, and 
then cool low down with ice. But there is no use in disputing 
the fact that fine butter which keeps well is made in this way. 
When the cooling is done with water alone, it takes more room 
to hold and store the milk, because more time is required ; 
and the butter too should be fine, for if the germs of taint 
have been destroyed, there will be no danger of the milk spoil- 
ing after heating, even if it must stand twenty-four or forty- 
eight hours for the cream to rise. 

In starting a creamery it is important to get what is 
needed to turn out a good product. The building should be 
constructed with reference to the work to be done. It need 



METHODS OF CONDUCTING CREAMERIES. 49 

not be expensive. In some sections buildings that have once 
served other purposes have been made to do duty for this. 
If it can be cleaned, renovated and furnished with the proper 
apparatus, there is no reason why a blacksmith shop, or a 
distillery, even, should not be turned into a creamery, any 
more than there is why it should not be changed into a 
dwelling for men and women — and the last has often been 
done. But it will generally be found better to put up a 
building specially adapted to the purpose, unless where there 
is already a well-built dairy house, to which the necessary ad- 
ditions can be made that will fit it for the more extensive op- 
erations. 

Frame buildings are the cheapest, and, when placed on a 
stone foundation, and tightly boarded inside and outside of 
the frame, properly lined with building paper between the 
boards, v/ith tight doors, and shutters to the windows, they 
can be kept at a very even temperature when favorably lo- 
cated. Cold spring water, when there is plenty of it, affords 
the readiest means of reducing the temperature in warm 
weather. An ice house is almost indispensable, and the 
creamery can be cooled by first passing the outside air under 
the ice before allowing it to enter. A sub-earth duct, as de- 
scribed farther on, might afford one of the best means of 
maintaining an equable temperature at all times. 

It is not easy to give a plan of a creamery that would be 
adapted to all situations. The descriptions of the several 
kinds already given, will enable any one to comprehend 
about what is needed ; and while as much money can be spent 
on building and furnishing one as the purse will allow, or 
the taste demand, it is not necessary that it should, in these 
cheap times, cost more than ^2000, including all the appa- 
rixtao for making butter and cheese from the milk of 600 cows. 
3 



50 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

There are, in some places, dairy houses which are better 
furnished than others around them. They contain, perhaps, 
a horse-power or water-wheel for churning, or a butter 
worker — which makes this part of the work easier there than at 
the others, and all the cream from the other farms is brought 
here to be churned, and the butter worked and prepared for 
market, but each lot is kept separate, and is turned over to 
the owner as soon as ready for market. It has been suggested 
that if the cream could in all cases be raised at the farm, a 
much wider scope of country could be covered by one 
creamery's operation than is practicable when the whole of 
the milk must be conveyed there, and it would also be more 
easy to fix the exact value of each man's product, as the 
cream does not vary as much as the milk. But the per- 
centage of butter in cream does vary considerably. If it 
is raised in open shallow pans, the cream will be thicker, and 
yield more butter to the same quantity, than when raised in 
deep cans and kept covered. In the latter there may be five 
pounds of cream from the same milk tliat would in the open 
pans give but three, and both turn out the same quantity of 
butter. It would then be difficult to fix the exact value on 
cream, unless raised under precisely the same conditions. 

In Wisconsin a new departure in this direction has been 
made the present winter, which promises to do much towards 
the final settlement of the ''bad butter" question. Deep 
cans of uniform size and construction are furnished to each 
patron, and the cream is collected and paid for by the inch. 
Tne cans are made with an opening in the centre of the bot- 
tom from which a tube runs up to within five inches of the 
top, where it turns and passes out through the side of the 
can ; the water or air circulates through this tube, and cools 
from the centre as well as from the outside, and the milk can 



METHODS OF CONDUCTING CREAMERIES. 5 1 

Stand longer without souring than in other cans. A grad- 
uated glass tube inserted at the side of the can shows the 
amount of cream to the fraction of an inch. The can is, we 
believe, patented. 

The '' Badger State Creamery," which is the name of the 
association having this in hand, propose to collect the cream 
from the milk of 4000 cows, and extend tlieir operations over 
the greater portion of the county in wliich the creamery is 
located. Local collectors will be appointed, who will visit 
each of the patrons every few days, take the cream from the 
cans, and credit the amount. These will deliver it at con- 
venient centres, to wagons passing directly through a num- 
ber of the local districts, and thus save much driving. 

This plan is attracting much attention, and if successful the 
present season, will doubtless be further extended. The cream 
can be collected at much less cost than the milk could be, and 
there is the additional advantage of leaving the skim milk on 
the farm. In those sections of the country away from the 
markets, where local dealers now go from house to house 
once a week and gather up the butter, if this plan were 
adopted, instead of the weekly visit of the butter dealer, there 
would be the semi-weekly or tri-weekly call of the cream col- 
lector ; and there would be one, or at the most, two kinds of 
butter made. We say two kinds because it might be found 
desirable to keep the cream that was just right from that 
which may, from any cause, show excessive sourness or taint; 
but the butter that would be made could hardly fail to be an 
improvement on that which the dealer now collects, and 
the value of the cream could be gauged, certainly, with 
more accuracy than can the value of the unnumbered grades 
of butter which now pass through the hands of dealers. 



V. 

CHEESE AND CHEESEMAKING. 

IT is often pointed out that the consumption of cheese in 
this country is less than we should expect, by comparison 
with other countries ; and it is now generally conceded that 
the cause is to be found in the inferior quality of much of the 
cheese offered for sale at home. 

Our cheese makers have for years made strong efforts to 
supply the people of England with the sort of cheese they 
wanted; and from the immense quantities sent there and sold, 
it would seem they had succeeded. 

It has been hoped that the introduction of cheese into the 
army rations would help to increase the demand here, and so 
it will to a limited extent ; but the twenty thousand men of 
which the army consists are no more that the inhabitants of 
one of our smaller cities, and many of our rural counties have 
each more than three times as many. And if our markets 
could be supplied with an article that would meet the tastes 
of the people, it would increase the demand many hundreds 
of times more than the army can. But the plain truth is, the 
great bulk of the cheese sold in our groceries and from the 
market stalls, is relished by comparatively few. Many of 
those who eat it do so under protest, because it does not 
taste like healthy food. A taste for it may be acquired, as it 
may for many things that had better never go into the stomach. 
If cheese of the right kind were to be obtained, much more 
would be used. Made from unskimmed milk, it would be a 

(52) 



CHEESE AND CHEESEMAKING. 53 

cheaper article of food at higher prices than it now brings ; 
cheaper, when its nutritive value is taken into account, than 
beef. And yet there are many families who never have it on 
their tables, because they have already tried so often to get 
some that was good, and have failed, that they have given up 
in disgust. At the late dairy fair in New York, it was our 
good fortune to taste some Cheddar cheese from Somerset- 
shire, England, that had a mild, rich, mellow, agreeable taste, 
so far removed from the cheese ordinarily sold here, that one 
v/onders how the same name could be applied to two articles 
differing so widely. We had also an opportunity of tasting 
some of the premium cheese from half a dozen different States, 
and candor compels us to say, that while they were above the 
average, in our opinion not many of them were of the kind that 
must be made before the people of this country will generally 
have cheese on their tables as a standard article of diet. 

At the present time, when cheese is so low that it pays a 
very small profit at best, and in many instances is made at a 
loss, it will be well to inquire whether some radical change 
must not be instituted in the methods and processes of 
manufacture. 

The factories which have been in operation heretofore, and 
more besides, may be able to find sale for all they can make 
in the markets they have built up. But there seems to be 
room for another class, and it looks as if some of these might 
best be located in districts where there are none at all at pre- 
sent; and it is not at all unlikely that in the future we shall 
find them scattered over the country, one or more in every 
county in which enough milk is produced, not to make cheese 
for export nor for the great city markets, but to supply the 
local demand, and to do this, besides the larger cheese for 
cutting by the grocerymen, make cheese of such a size that a 



54 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

household can take one entire every time they buy. This 
would be a step towards reducing the cost to the consumer 
without any reduction in the price received for it by the 
maker. There would not then be a necessity for cutting by 
the retailer and the loss by drying, to say nothing of the in- 
convenience, and the addition which must be made to the 
first cost to pay him for all this. 

Let us make our meaning plain. In a locality where 
cheese has never been made, but large quantities of butter — it 
may be in a county or centre of fifty thousand people — a 
crea:nery is started ; it makes butter only through the winter — 
in summer the demand for butter is not so great, and in 
former years the butter would have been packed ; but as win- 
ter dairying becomes more and more extended, the difference 
in price of butter in summer and winter is not so great, and 
it will not pay to hold the summer's product. Part of the 
summer's milk can then be made into cheese, or all, if de- 
sired, and the cheese, which should be of the styles suited to 
the demand, could be sold to the grocers or taken to the 
market towns and sold direct by the maker; in this way the 
m^irkets would not be so likely to become glutted, as would 
inevitably be the case if the present mode and system were 
indefinitely extended. 

The fact that some regular cheese factories have been 
erected in some of the butter-producing districts, and after a 
few seasons' operations were closed, does not prove that the 
plan suggested will not be found desirable. One reason for 
the partial failure of some of these is to be found in the 
fact that too great a return was expected for the milk. 
The average quantity of milk to a pound of cheese is about 
ten pounds, nearly five quarts. Often the only iiiilk sold in 
these districts is that which goes into the villages or to the 



CHEESE AND CHEESEMAKING. 55 

nearest town or city. For this a high price has been the rule — 
not less than three cents per quart, sometimes eight — and when 
it came to furnishing milk to the factory, the producers ex- 
pected something like these figures; where in butter-making, 
if the average is about twenty-six pounds of milk to a pound 
of butter, and the butter averages twenty-five cents a pound, 
they would have less than one cent a pound, or about two 
cents a quart for the milk, if we estimate the value of the 
skim-milk to be equal to the cost of making the butter. But 
milk could not be bought for two cents a quart, and conse- 
quently the factories could not compete with those in the 
great dairy districts where milk is sold in unlimited quanti- 
ties at one dollar per hundred pounds, and often less. 

The kinds of cheese that would sell best would soon be dis- 
covered. A small Cheddar loaf, or nutmeg, pineapple, or a 
square cheese of small size, the "Young America," might be 
tried, or some soft cheese for immediate sale. The present win- 
ter a small soft cream cheese was sold in the groceries of New 
York in one pound boxes at thirty-five cents a pound. Even 
imitations of the strong-smelling foreign cheeses might find 
some buyers, because, bad as these smell, their taste is often 
very good ; but something different from these must be made 
to sell to those whose taste has never been cultivated in that 
direction, and also very different from the gum-biting stuff 
which is the best that many grocers are now able to get. 

The cheese-maker of the future will, without doubt, make 
more of the kind of cheese that people can eat without doing 
violence to their senses of taste and smell. If he does not, he 
must expect to see less eaten rather than more ; for we are 
guided by our taste in choosing what to eat, and when the 
tongue or nose pronounce against cheese or any other article 
of food, analysis showing the large proportion of nutritious 



56 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

matter it contains will be of no use, if it does not suit the 
taste — we will get the equivalents in something else that 
does, even if we must pay more for them. 

A cheese factory is precisely similar to the large creamery 
described in a former chapter, except that it has no provision 
for making butter. The building, the vats for coagulating the 
milk, the boiler for heatmg it, and the curd-mill and presses, 
are all the same. The milk is brought in as there, but it is 
not skimmed — instead of being allowed to remain at rest in the 
vats during the night, it is stirred at intervals by hand, or a 
stirring apparatus is attached which is run by the water as it 
flows away, after cooling the milk in the vats. The vats are 
only made half full in the evening, the morning milk being 
distributed in the same way. Where the milk is only brought 
once a day, as it may be in the cooler weather, there is, of 
course, none to go into them in the evening._ 

Before describing the process of making cheese, it may 
be well to say something about rennet, which, as is well 
known, is an important agent in the formation of cheese. 
A rennet, as the dairymen of this country know it, is the 
fourth or larger stomach of a calf; it is also called a "veil." 
That from a calf which has lived altogether on milk is much 
the best, and if it has gone entirely without food for the last 
ten or twelve hours of its life the strength will be all the 
greater. Care must be taken not to use too much water in 
cleaning ; wiping lightly with a moistened cloth until it is 
clean is the better way. If then blown up like a bladder and 
hung up and dried, or preserved in salt, it will retain its power 
of coagulating milk for years. 

From this it would appear that during the time the calf had 
gone hungry nature had prepared the active agent, whatever 
it may be, for digesting the milk which the calf would drink. 



CHEESE AND CHEESEMAKING. 57 

and collected it about the inner surface of the stomach ; and 
also that the longer this goes on the stronger the rennet, until 
the usual limit between the times of feeding is passed ; after 
this the stomach becomes inflamed and is spoiled for the 
cheese-maker's use. 

There are different views held by scientific men in regard 
to the manner in which rennet acts. The ferment or yeast- 
plant which is the active agent in bread-raising, is an organ- 
ized ferment — that is, it grows and develops like other plants, 
a very small portion of it being enough to furnish the seed, so 
to speak, for filling a large vessel, if the material in which it is 
placed and the conditions are right. 

The experiments of Hallier, the German microscopist, with 
rennet, seemed to prove that it was a ferment of the same 
character ; but of late another view, that it acts by contact, 
and is an organic, but not an organized, ferment has been 
prominently brought out, notably by Prof. Caldwell at the 
last meeting of the American Dairymen's Association, who 
also suggests that we may yet be able to find other organic 
ferments in some of the vegetable juices to take the place of 
rennet, and names the juice of the paw-paw (^Carica papaya) 
as one which has been suggested. 

Again, it is held that the action of rennet in coagulating 
the milk and afterwards on the curd when this has been 
pressed and put away to ripen, is similar to the digestive 
process, and Prof. Arnold calls cheese '' the partially digested 
coagulum of milk." This is ridiculed by some practical 
cheese-makers. Without expressing any opinion, we may say 
that this view looks as if it might be true. Whatever the 
manner of its action, the fact remains that it has so far been 
the most available of all that has ever been suggested or tried 
for fitting the curd of milk for food in such a form that it 
could readily be preserved for long periods of time. 
3* 



58 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

The liquid or dry extracts of rennet which can now be 
purchased bring it witliin the reach of those who could not 
procure or use the veils. These extracts are prepared in for- 
eign countries from the fresh rennets — those we have seen 
came from Denmark. Many of the rennets, too, which are 
used in this country are imported. In preparing rennet for 
use the veils are cut in pieces and steeped in brine or boiled 
whey a few days before it is Avanted. Dr. Voelcker gives the 
mode of preparation at a noted English dairy as follows: 
Slice the half of a lemon ; sprinkle it with about six ounces 
of salt, then pour upon it one quart of boiling water : cover 
the vessel to retain the steam. When cold put into the liquid 
one fresh veil ; allow the whole to stand for two days, then 
strain the liquid through a fine cloth and the rennet is ready 
for use. This quantity is deemed sufficient to coagulate 
six hundred gallons of milk. 

The pieces of rennet should be rubbed several times while 
being steeped to extract all the strength, and it is recom- 
mended to make enough at once to last several weeks at least. 
Sometimes enough is made to last two months; in this way 
greater uniformity is secured than when it is made every {ew 
days, the rennets not being all alike in strength ; but care 
must be taken that there is no taint in any of them nor in the 
whey used, or the whole batch may be spoiled. The steeping 
is best done in stone jars, and the liquid had best be kept in 
these until wanted for use. 

There are many details connected with cheese-making that we 
cannot attempt to explain here; the experienced cheese-maker 
knows how to adapt himself to the variations in the milk, the 
temperature and the kind of cheese he desires to make; but he 
finds it hard to explain everything unless during the operation, 
when the eye and the touch and smell can all be brought into 



CHEESE AND CHEESEMAKING. 59 

play to determine the different conditions. The process, 
however, as conducted in the best factories where cheese is 
made from whole milk, may be outlined as follows : 

The milk being in the vat, the first thing to be done is to 
separate the whey, containing the sugar of milk, most of the 
water and the mineral matter, from the caseine and the fat 
which go into the cheese; the milk is brought to a tempera- 
ture of 80 or 84 degrees — it is not often necessary to do this 
by cooling, as it has usually been cooled sufficiently over 
night or before being brought in. When it is too low, warm 
v/ater or steam from the boiler must be applied around or in 
the vat until it is right. The rennet is now poured in and 
thoroughly mixed by stirring a minute or two ; the milk is 
then kept at this temperature until it thickens ; as soon as it is 
firm enough, which may be in an hour or less after the rennet 
was put in, it is cut. The necessary degree of firmness is as- 
certained by passing the finger along just under the surface — if 
there is a distinct break or fracture in the curd in front of the 
finger it is ready for cutting. This is done with a curd knife, 
which consists of a series of knives set in a frame, from one- 
third of an inch to several inches apart, as the curds are to 
be coarse or fine ; the cutting may first be done horizontally, 
dividing the cin-d into layers from top to bottom, and then 
vertically lengthwise of the vat and crosswise from side to 
side ; when finished, the curd will be left in cubes of perhaps 
half an inch on a side when fine curds are made ; where 
coarse curds, the divisions will be much larger. The 
whey now separates and the curds begin to settle ; heat is 
applied either with warm water around the vat or by inject- 
ing steam directly into the vat, and stirring the whey and 
curd, so that every particle, even to the centre of each bit of 
curd, is gradually brought to the same degree of heat, about 



6o ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

98 degrees, more or less, as the cheesing process is to be hast- 
ened or retarded. When this stage has been reached, per- 
haps two hours and a half from the time of beginning, the 
heating is discontinued and the particles of curd allowed to 
settle and pack on the bottom. Three distinct courses are 
now open : the whey can be withdrawn at once — this is 
usually done with a syphon over top of the vat, a strainer is 
put in to prevent any of the curd passing out with the whey, 
and the curd drained, ground, salted and pressed while per 
fectly sweet. This was the practice in the earlier years of the 
factory system, but much of the cheese made in this way did 
not turn out well, and the plan of allowing the curd to 
develop more or less acidity in the vat before salting and 
pressing came into favor. This is what is known as the Eng- 
lish Cheddar method, and the change the curd undergoes is 
called '' cheddaring; " in this method the 'whey is with- 
drawn early, or at least before showing much acidity, and one 
end of the vat is lowered and the curd heaped up along the 
sides and allowed to drain. As soon as it has become firmly 
packed it is cut into pieces perhaps a foot square, and turned 
over so that all shall change alike. This is done at intervals 
until the curd is fit for salting, which is determined by its 
consistency and general appearance and smell. It is now run 
through the curd mill and salted and put to press. Another 
plan is to allow the whey to remain until it becomes distinctly 
acid; in the meanwhile stirring the curd to prevent it from 
packing, and when the whey has been drawn and the curd 
has drained, salt and press as before. From two to three 
pounds of salt are used to a thousand pounds of milk, and 
the cheese remain in the press until the following day, when 
they are taken out and with their bandages around them are 
placed on the shelves in the curing house, where they remain 
from twenty days to two or three months or longer. 



CHEESE AND CHEESEMAKING. 6l 

The daily routine at a cheese factory, beginning in the 
morning at half- past four or five o'clock, will be first turning 
and rubbing the cheese on hand, and receiving the milk as it 
comes in till eight o'clock; then the working of the milk 
in the vats begins ; the various manipulations occupy the time 
till two or three o'clock in the afternoon, when the pressing 
is generally finished; then there is the washing up, and from 
six to eight in the evening milk is again received. The 
proper curing or ripening of the cheese when made, which is 
really the cheesing process — what goes before being only the 
separation of the caseineand fat, and putting in proper form — 
is most important. The curing house should be of a uniform 
temperature ; about 70 degrees is considered best, but this will 
depend somewhat on the amount of rennet used and how it 
was worked. The caverns in the rocks where the French 
Roquefort cheese are stored have currents of cold air passing 
through them often as low as 40 degrees F. In the last few 
years much attention has been given to cold storage; houses 
kept cold with ice through the summer are used for storing 
the cheese, but the results so far have not been so uniformly 
successful as has been hoped for. 

The process of cheesing is a complicated one ; butter-mak- 
ing is for the most part a simple mechanical operation, but 
cheese-making is more of a chemical process, and the ever 
varying conditions of the milk and the temperature, which 
must be watched in making and curing, require experience, 
judgment and skill to turn out a uniformly good product, and it 
is never advisable for one with no experience to commence the 
business on a large scale. Men experienced in the business 
whose services can be obtained are to be found in the princi- 
pal cheese producing districts. They are paid from twenty to 
fifty dollars and more per month- — one who is able to take 



62 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

charge of the entire business of a factory will command the 
highest figures. 

If any one should inquire, what is the best cheese? it 
would be hard to answer. We have elsewhere indicated what 
would probably be considered so by the largest number of 
persons, but tastes differ very much. The cottage cheese 
which is made from skimmed milk, which has been warmed 
in the sun or on the stove till the whey separates, and eaten 
fresh, is relished by almost every one, if not alone at least 
with sugar or syrup ; by some it is preferred when it has 
been allowed to stand awhile, until it rivals some of the 
strong-smelling foreign cheese; each one of which has its ad- 
miring devotees, who think nothing equal to their own pet 
nasal irritator. The cheese properly made from whole milk 
is something different from these ; as a food it can hardly 
be overestimated, and it should be made in many places 
where none is made now. 

Arnold in his "American Dairying" says: *' The choicest 
cheese, that which is the richest and highest flavored, must like 
the choicest fruit be consumed not far from where it is pro- 
duced." If this be true, and there is no reason to doubt it, 
some of those who have found in the past a great profit 
in making the finest butter may find in the future that by 
taking equal pains they will be able to produce an article of 
cheese that by its delicious flavor and higher value as food 
will bring them a proportionately greater return for the time 
and skill spent in its production. 



VI. 

OUR DAIRY HOUSES. THE BEST BUTTER. CONCLUSION. 

THERE are many places where associated dairying can 
never be practiced ; there are others where it might be 
to the advantage of all concerned, but will not be for a long 
time, if ever; and even in its strongholds there are those who 
prefer to have nothing to do with it, and to the private dairy 
house we must continue to look for a large share of our butter. 

We have already referred to the earthen crocks and the 
small tin pans which are still what the majority of butter 
makers use, to hold the milk for cream-raising, and among 
them are some who turn out as fine butter as any that is 
made, though they do it at what seems to be a greater ex- 
penditure of time, trouble and labor, than need be with the 
best modern appliances within reach. We know that some 
of them will require proof of the most positive kind to con- 
vince them that cream can be raised from milk as well, or as 
completely, when it stands at a depth of twelve inches, as it 
can in a shallow pan of three inches; but nevertheless it has 
been done for years, and is being done now in many of the 
best dairies in the country. 

The earlier opinions in regard to the effect of temperature 
on cream raising are yet firmly held by many, for reasons 
which they consider self-evident ; but if any one has had his 
faith in these two cardinal points so far shaken as to look for 
more evidence, he can easily and at a very trifling outlay ob- 
tain the means of testing the matter to his own satisfaction. 

(63) 



64 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

Any tinsmith will for a dollar make a deep can like the pails 
or coolers used so extensively in the creameries. Our own, 
nineteen and a half inches deep and nine inches in diameter, 
cost eighty cents with handle and cover, and any carpenter 
can make a plain, water-tight box of pine plank like those 
used in the dairies and butter factories of Sweden, large 
enough to contain the cans, and the necessary water and ice, 
and furnished with a tight-fitting lid, at a very slight addi- 
tional cost. 

In a few counties in Pennsylvania a modified form of tin 
pail is used for setting -the milk : the depth is eight or ten 
inches, the diameter six inches at the bottom and eight at the 
top; by those who have used them they are preferred to 
small pans. 

This form is similar to that fixed on by Mr. Bliss as giving 
the best results, in the numerous experiments which he has 
made, and now used in his creamer, noticed under dairy ap- 
paratus. His are, however, somewhat larger, and he has 
found that while in the ordinary deep can there is a ring of 
milk around the sides near the bottom from which the cream 
is not all removed, in these it is uniformly separated all through. 
A further recognition of the advantages which this form — 
wider at top than at the bottom — has over the ordinary one 
with straight sides, is to be found in the Fairlamb can, used 
in the "Badger State" Creamery, already referred to, and 
elsewhere. 

Sixty degrees Fahrenheit was long supposed to be the only 
temperature at which anything approaching the best results 
could be obtained. Where cold spring-water could be had, or 
a deep well-constructed cellar, this was the temperature most 
easily attainable, and it came to be looked upon as the nat- 
ural temperature for butter making. The Swedish systen 



OUR DAIRY HOUSES. 65 

has, however, shown that cream can be raised in much less 
time when the milk is set in water to which ice has been 
added, at a temperature of from 50 degrees down to 35, and 
large quantities of butter have been made in this way, of ex- 
cellent long-keeping qualities. 

When cream can be raised at these low temperatures, as is 
often done, in ten to twenty-four hours, instead of thirty-six 
or forty-eight, much is gained. The milk needs to be taken 
care of only from one-fourth to one-half the time, and a less 
number of vessels are required, less room to set them, and less 
labor in handling them. 

When cream is raised in the shortest time named above — 
ten hours — it will always be thin and sweet. It may remain 
sweet as long as forty-eight hours, or even longer at a low 
temperature. But the longer it stands, the more it will 
thicken. Being thin, there is more of it in proportion ; four 
inches is not unusual from ordinary milk, and six inches from 
good Jersey cows, on cans nineteen inches deep, and this 
is sometimes urged as an objection because it adds to the 
labor of churning ; but this is not nearly as much as the 
labor saved in handling and taking care of the milk. 

In regard to the saving of labor, we quote from Mr. 
Hardin, *'In shallow setting, the labor consists in filling a 
large number of pans, lifting them first on to the racks and 
then off again, skimming a large surface while standing, and 
at all times of day and night, when the best results are ob- 
tained ; washing a large number of tins, keeping up a fire in 
the milk room, fall, spring and winter, night and day; but 
principally in the great amount of scrubbing to be done, 
that a large room and all its surroundings should be kept 
immaculately clean." This, as already shown, is greatly re. 
duced by the use of deep cans or large pans. In the last it 



66 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

is reduced to the lowest point; but the milk cannot be cooled 
as readily as in the cans, except where cooling from the top 
is brought into play, as is done in Bliss's creamer, the 
Smith's creamery vat, the creamery pan of the Northwest, 
and others of that class. This is the most rapid way of cool- 
ing, and if combined with cooling around the sides, will suit 
those who believe in taking the "animal heat" as it is 
termed, out of the milk in the shortest possible time. Those 
who wish to keep the temperature gradually falling through 
as long a time as practicable, can modify it to suit their 
purpose. Whether the vessel for raising cream had bet- 
ter stand in water or in the air depends on circumstances; 
water as it is pumped from the earth or flows from the 
spring has usually a temperature not far from 50 degrees, and 
if enough of it can be had, any quantity of milk can with 
proper arrangements be reduced to the same temperature ; 
air has, in the latitude of 40° north, between the Rocky 
mountains and the Atlantic, a mean annual temperature also 
about the same or a little higher, but it varies from 10 de- 
grees below zero to 100 degrees above, and this variation 
would be fatal to cream-raising ; but the air can be kept at a 
uniform temperature in a cellar or in a vault under ground, 
or in a house in a sheltered position, properly built above 
ground, without water at all, and when, in addition to these, 
ice can be had, we have all that is needed to give us entire 
control of the temperature. 

In our best spring dairy houses the body of the milk is 
surrounded by water, the surface exposed to the air. A 
tight box into which water is pumped from a well, and con- 
tinually renewed, answers as well as the spring ; when there is 
a wind-pump and a cover on the box or trough for the water, 
this is an excellent plan, but in many localities there are neither 



OUR DAIRY HOUSES. 6^ 

springs nor wind-pumps, and to pump the water from wells 
by hand is a serious job, and a good cellar or vault is relied 
on. One well adapted to butter making all the year round 
can be made by having the main cellar of the ordinary depth 
of seven or eight feet, and then at one end excavate the 
ground a few feet deeper, run up a partition or hollow wall 
between this and the other part, arch over the top, run a flue 
up. from the bottom for ventilation, and it is complete, for 
maintaining an equable temperature of fifty-five or sixty de- 
giees. If, as in the case of one we know, an opening can be 
made from the arched portion where the milk is to be kept 
into a well, high enough above the water to prevent flooding 
in case the water rises, the moist air which some deem essen- 
tial, and which they get in their spring houses, can be had 
here as well. 

When there is a spring, the best dairy houses have thick 
stone walls, at least below, cemented or boarded floors, and 
excavations or tanks to hold the water at the required height. 
At present ice is so much used that it has come to be consid- 
ered almost indispensable for tempering either the air or the 
water to suit the requirements of the dairy. 

The way in which ice can be economized to the greatest ex- 
tent, and used with the least outlay of labor, is to have the 
milk-room adjoining the ice-house, with their floors on the 
same level, and to have a tight compartment made into which 
to set the milk, lower than the ice, and to keep the air in this 
cold by the ice above. The air should not be allowed to cir- 
culate except from the floor of the ice-house to the space 
where the milk is set, otherwise there will be a waste of ice. 

The ice-house is often so placed that this is not practicable, 
and here, when the setting of the milk is done in air alone, 
Hardin's method can be used to advantage. 



68 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

Wilkinson's sub-earth ventilation affords a means of keep- 
ing the air in a dairy-house or cellar at the same temperature 
all the year round, and also of perfectly ventilating the same. 
This is attained by constructing an underground duct con- 
nected at one end with the dairy and at the other with a well 
sunk in the ground, to the depth at which the duct is placed. 
This may be ten or twelve feet below the surface of the ground. 
The length should not be less than two hundred feet, and the 
size from one to six superficial feet in cross section. It has 
an earth bottom, the sides and top may be of brick, or stone 
flags may be set up in the shape of an inverted V. The house 
can be so constructed that no air can get in except that which 
comes through the duct ; this will be at all seasons of the year 
about 50 degrees F., if the proper flow is maintained. It is 
claimed that the air as it traverses the duct becomes cleared 
of all noxious gases and odors, and is so dry that matches 
kept in a cellar supplied with it, light and burn readily. To 
secure a flow of air through the duct towards the house there 
is an exhaust shaft which, in the case of cellar or dairy-house 
attached to the dwelling, may be the chimney of the kitchen. 
A small stove placed inside of it will furnish the heat to give 
the upward draft when there is no fire in the kitchen stove. 
The system is patented, and a number of dairies in various 
parts of the country are now furnished with it. 

The room for churning and working butter should not be too 
warm nor too cold for the comfort of those who attend to it. 
Whether the cream had better be churned sweet or allowed to 
sour, has by the practice of the majority been decided in favor 
of slight souring; but the present advocates of churning it 
sweet have a ready demand for all the fresh butter they offer. 
When it is soured, it must not stand too long, and the tem- 
perature for churning should be from 58° in summer, to 63° 



THE BEST BUTTER. 69 

in winter; for whatever may be said in regard to cream raising, 
it is as yet not disputed that about 60° is the right tempera- 
ture for churning. Everybody now knows that the grain of 
the butter should not be injured by improper churning or 
working. The hands are not to be used for working ; for 
small quantities the ladle will do ; when there is more, a 
smooth table of plank or a marble slab, and a paddle, about 
ten inches long, and five wide, and a handle at each end, is a 
very effective means of working in skillful hands. In many 
places the Orange county worker or something similar is used. 
This is simply a triangular table, with sides a few inches high, 
and a round or square lever fastened at one end and held at 
the other. Then there are various kinds, with round or 
grooved rollers and circular or oblong tables. The latest idea 
is to apply simple pressure to force out the buttermilk, without 
any working at all. 

Salting goes with the working, except by the French 
method; none but the best quality of salt should be used, and it 
must be well incorporated with the butter; the quantity varying 
from one-half ounce to an ounce per pound, to suit the market 
or the particular customer it is intended for. In France much 
butter is marketed in excellent condition, and even sent to 
England, without any salt at all. 

THE BEST BUTTER. 

The standard which has been set up requires an agreeable 
flavor, sweet, pure, nutty, aromatic and clean ; a firmness 
of body that will not easily become soft; a close and compact 
texture, with the globules unbroken and the grain distinct. 
It must not be inclined to change rapidly, nor be strong, 
tallowy, cheesy, bitter or stale, nor have that pasty, open- 
grained condition which makes it give under the knife and 
stick like salve or grease. If it has all the good qualities and 



70 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

none of the bad, it comes under the class ^' best, " whether 
made in an eastern dairy or a western creamery. 

It has been estimated that in the eastern cities about two 
pounds in a hundred are sold as ''gilt-edged" or ''fancy." 
Some of this goes to hotels, but the most to private families, 
in the name of the butter-maker, either furnished by himself 
or through a dealer. It was this mode of marketing that has 
had much to do with the high prices that have been obtained, 
and there was a reason for it. Butter as it was found in the 
ordinary markets varied more than anything else that was 
bought for the table ; and when those who wanted the best 
that could be had, once found that which was uniformly good 
and would stay good until it was used, they took it, and 
rather than be at the risk of changing and at the trouble of 
searching for it, took one man's make, who by making a study 
of their tastes, as far as he could discover them from their 
commendations or complaints, was able to retain their patron- 
age and in a manner cut off competition, and to a great extent 
fix his own price. Sometimes this price, high as it seemed to 
others less fortunate, did not more than pay for the extra 
trouble and cost ; often it did, and in many cases the merits 
of the butter bore no comparison to the extra charge. 

The ways of the merchant are not always plain, but it may 
safely be said that in the open market, butter will bring what 
it is worth ; and the more the average quality of the butter is 
improved, the less demand will there be for these exclusive 
makes, which have already most severely felt the effects of the 
hard times. The demand for good butter will increase, but 
the supply is likely to increase much faster. The leveling 
tendency that has been going on since the creamery system 
began will not stop ; and as the leveling is up and not down, 
there will in time be enough for everybody at prices within 
the reach of all. 



THE BEST BUTTER. 7 1 

It is believed by many butter makers in the soft water 
districts that no limestone or hard water region can produce 
a prime article. In regard to this we quote from Willard -."^ 
"With due respect to the opinions of others, it is beleived 
that as nice butter can be made in the hard water districts as 
in the far-famed butter regions." "There are," he says, 
"butter makers in the hard water districts of New York, whose 
butter is pronounced, by competent judges, equal to the best 
brought into the markets," and adds, "I have seen as good 
butter made upon the black slate hills of Herkimer county, as 
any in the soft vvater regions — butter that would keep at least 
nine months as sweet as a nut, and as nice as could be 
desired." 

It is not the aim of this work to give the details of milk 
production, but a few well known and settled points will be 
referred to, which must be borne in mind if the best, or even 
good butter is to be made. 

The cow, her food and drink and treatment, are the 
foundations on which the result depends. 

The cow must be healthy and well fed. Some of the 
highest priced butter ever sold in this country has been made 
from the ordinary dairy cow, without reference to breed, fed 
on good hay from mixed grasses, with bran and corn meal 
through the winter; nothing else, except plenty of pure water 
to drink. Through the summer, good pasture and a little 
bran, and the same flowing spring water and plenty of shade 
trees to shield them from the scorching sun, was the treatment. 

A poor milker, or one that yields but little butter, should 
not be kept, but fattened and turned into beef. One 
that gives milk that is imperfect from any cause, should not be 
retained in a butter or cheese dairy ; the milk from one such 

* Dairy Husbandry, p. 236, 



72 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

will spoil the entire product ; and if there is any suspicion of 
such an one, she should be traced and weeded out. 

No matter what the food is, be it grass or hay, grain or 
roots, there should be enough of it ; when ranging over 
pastures, cows eat until they have enough and then stop; but 
in the stables it is different — if they are half starved there, 
and then have feed thrown before them in unlimited quantity, 
they will eat too much — and regular feeding, enough but not 
. too much, should be the rule all the time. 

Stagnant water often contains the germs of minute organisms, 
and, when the cow drinks it, they develop in the milk to such 
an extent as to unfit it for use, unless heated at once when 
drawn ; and the purer and cleaner and fresher the water, 
the better will be the milk — of which over eighty per cent, is 
water. 

Kind treatment will be given by the humane man, and 
dollars and cents ought to be a sufficient inducement to 
others, for it would seem no cow would be habitually ill- 
treated when once her owner thoroughly appreciated the fact 
that he was being cheated out of part of his income by such 
a course. Kicking and beating, and dogs that worry them, 
had better be dispensed with ; and quarrelsome cows, old or 
young, that never give the others a quiet moment when they 
can get near them, ought to be restrained. 

When the milk is good to begin with, the manufacturer can 
make good butter, if he takes the means to preserve it in good 
condition until he has the cream out of it. But when the 
milk from any cause has once begun to show taint, the 
greatest skill is required to check this and prevent his mate- 
rials from being spoiled ; it can often be done, to some ex- 
tent, but the product will not belong to the kind we have 
just been considering ; it will find its place lower down in 
rhe scale of merit. 



CONCLUSION. 73 

CONCLUSION. 

To change suddenly from old and tried ways so long as 
they are reasonably satisfactory, is, in what pertains to dairy- 
ing, as well as in any other business, not to be advised unless 
the alternative which presents itself will after investigation 
promise better results. There are centres in various parts of 
the country within the limits named in one of our first pages, 
where the system, which has mainly occupied our attention, 
has reached its fullest development, and where it will show for 
itself what are its possibilities. 

In New York these will be found from Franklin county in 
the extreme north, diagonally across the State to the shores 
of Lake Erie. While it is more general here than elsewhere, 
the counties of Orange and Delaware in the eastern part 
of the State have some good creameries. Little Falls and 
Herkimer, Utica and Rome are surrounded by cheese fac- 
tories, and farther south, and west, about Sherburne, in 
Chenango county, and Morrisville, in Madison county, and 
on to Lake Chatauqua, are creameries where butter is more 
largely produced. In Pennsylvania cheese factories will 
be found within easy reach of Meadville, in Crawford county; 
and at Marshallton, in Chester county, butter has been suc- 
cessfully made from the milk of some two hundred cows kept 
on four or five adjoining farms. 

Wellington, Chagrin Falls, and Hudson, in northern Ohio, 
are the points in that State around which they cluster. Elgin 
and Marengo, in Illinois, have become well known all over 
the country by the excellence of their creamery products, 
and the enterprise shown in pushing them into the leading 
markets. Wisconsin has Fort Atkinson as one centre of its 
dairy interests and at Mazomanie is located the " Badger 
State Creamery," where, as the reader of previous pages will 



74 ASSOCIATED DAIRYING. 

recollect, the cream alone and not the milk is collected for 
butter-making. The creameries at Manchester, Monticello 
and Anamosa, in north-eastern Iowa, will show what has been 
done here. There are of course many other points that 
could be named ; these referred to are among the most 
prominent, and will show what has been and can be accom- 
plished. 

The dairy productions of the country are now simply enor- 
mous, and statistics go to show that they rank ahead of 
either of the other three great agricultural products, corn, 
wheat and cotton, and as far as regards quantity are probably 
equal to the present wants of the civilized world, though as 
the needs increase, a corresponding increase in production 
will naturally follow. The great room for advancement now 
is in the improvement of the average quality, and those 
localities that can carry this farthest by the method that is 
most economical are the ones to which the future of the 
business promises the best returns. 



